Girls' Generation on Track to Match Psy's YouTube Success

K-Pop Commandos: A Korean girl group hopes to crack the US market with a single produced by an international team.

K-pop girl group Girls’ Generation is outpacing Psy’s “Gangnam Style” on YouTube with their “I Got a Boy” music video.

“I Got a Boy” has logged just under 30 million views since it was uploaded onto YouTube on January 7. While it took “Gangnam” 19 days to log its first 10 million, “Boy” did it in just three. “Gangnam” took 26 days to hit 20 million. “Boy” did it in just six.

Encouraging the group’s hopes of scoring a Gangnam-caliber global hit is the fact that the US is the top source of views with 4.5 million, surpassing the 3.1 million logged in Korea. The other top sources include Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Britain, suggesting the song has global appeal.

But the rate of the song’s early views may not imply it has the viral appeal of Psy’s hit because its early viewership may be generated by the group’s sustained popularity and activity on the current K-pop scene. Psy had been on a two-year hiatus before uploading “Gangnam Style”. Even before his hiatus, he had never achieved the local and Asian popularity of Girls’ Generation. So whatever viewership Psy’s video achieved was mostly due to its inherent appeal to a global audience with little exposure to Kpop.

“Boy” also isn’t the tour de force of originality and verve that “Gangnam” is. It’s a commercial product of a deliberately global-market-tailored collaboration among SM Entertainment’s producer and director Yoo Young-jin and songwriters from Britain, Norway and Sweden.

“Boy” doesn’t offer the satiric bite of “Gangnam”, nor does it match the raw, driving beat of Psy’s viral hit. Nevertheless, the song’s music video communicates a high degree of girl-energy and impressive production values, distinguished by the super-saturated colors and hyper-kinetic girl-energy of a live-action cartoon.

The song has earned good reviews from overseas media. Rolling Stone applauded it as “sharply plotted and blindingly razzle-dazzle.” The group’s latest album was called a series of “polished K-pop confections that combine elements of forward-thinking EDM (electronic dance music), classic and modern R&B, 80s new wave, and more” by Billboard. Time magazine opined that the girls themselves are likely to enjoy strong appeal in the US.

That anticipated appeal got Girls’ Generation signed in 2012 to Interscope Records which also represents Lady Gaga, Madonna, Van Halen, Nelly Furtado and Far East Movement, among others.

“The music video for ‘I Got a Boy’ is a feast for the eyes, much like ‘Gangnam Style’ was, due to the dynamic choreography,” said critic Kim Zakka. “Close cooperation between SM and Interscope will play an important role in its success.”

“Foreign fans are more interested in the song partly because it has broken out of the typical K-pop mold,” said popular Korean music critic Song Ki-chul.

“We expected local fans to say that the song feels a little strange to them, but we wanted to try various new avenues as we regard the song as a cornerstone to enter the U.S. market,” said the group’s Korean management company SM Entertainment which created Girls’ Generation in 2007. “I Got a Boy” will be followed later this year by a new album specifically tailored to the US market.

“We are preparing a number of new songs for Girls’ Generation’s new album, including an English version of ‘I Got a Boy,’ and they will travel back and forth between the U.S. and Korea,” said SM Entertainment.