99 Luftballoons (Jah, Baby! Rock Und Roll!)

In the Eighties, Germany was Korea...

I say this because, as I realized during a conversation recently, Psy's massively stupid hit song bears more than a passing resemblance to the German-only pop hits of the Eighties (Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" and Nena's "99 Luftballoons"). I can explain the popularity of those songs back then (everyone was on cocaine), not so much "Gangnam Style" today (do people still do cocaine?)

It makes sense that we as Americans would embrace the more stupid aspects of foreign cultures, in the mistaken belief that what becomes popular here is exactly what the people in France or Germany are getting down to. I can remember when a rapping French baby had a hit song over here, and this was in the grunge-laden Nineties. Jordy, where have you gone?

It's all part of our inherent lack of self-esteem as a country, because we're still relatively young compared to some ancient civilizations and so we make the mistake of thinking that something with a weird accent to it must be more sophisticated than anything we can produce. That helps explain the brief moment of Roberto Benigni over here, for one thing.

But we have plenty of stupid pop music over here. Take Rihanna's new song "Diamonds," for example (take it far, far away). We don't need Gotye's Australian-electronic shitstorm "Somebody That I Used to Know," though you wouldn't think that from all the times I heard that on the radio this year (recently it started cropping back up on radio after a brief hiatus. I still want to punch the guy in the face, but less violently so).

Psy (or PSY, because I'm guessing he's super-excited and thus renders his own name in capitals, though I draw the line at adding an exclamation mark at the end) is Korea's answer to Gotye, I guess; in fifteen years, both of them will be on yet another VH1 "where are they now" marathon (if the latest season of "Basketball Mob Wives LA of Atlanta Love And/or Hip-Hop" takes a breather over the Christmas break to let those horrible, horrible people get on with their horrible, horrible lives), and we'll all laugh at the time we thought they'd have a longer lasting career. Because honestly, no one listens to Falco without a large dose of irony, and that's the way it should be.