Psy’s “Daddy” & “Napal Baji” put him back on the right track

Psy has returned to bless our existences with two music videos, one for “Daddy” and one for “Napal Baji“, both of which score far better than his other post-“Gangnam Style” releases.

People say Psy’s problem post-“Gangnam Style” is that he’s been trying too hard, but I’ve always disagreed with that in a way. Yeah, he WAS trying too hard, but he wasn’t trying too hard to be “weird” or “outlandish” (I’d say he actually toned it down). Nah, the actual thing he was trying to hard at was being accepted by the mainstream and by Western audiences (as he admitted himself on V app) instead of just doing whatever the fuck he wanted. Psy began to blunt his creativity by trying to cater to an audience that he knew found one sound of his appealing, which was essentially the opposite of the strategy that made him immensely popular to begin with. Fortunately, he seems to have realized that and has shifted course a bit this time around.

With “Daddy” and “Napal Baji”, while one can still see the influence leftover from his success (and it’s hard to blame him for continuing with it), I see far more of a shift back towards his roots. “Daddy” appears to be the single aimed towards international audiences, and it shows cause the sound has a template that he’s used for the West before. Fortunately, the concept and the music video are back to being outlandish in a weirdo, crazed man way, which is always what appealed to me. As for “Napal Baji”, his presumed single aimed at domestic audiences, it’s almost unsurprisingly a far better song. Granted, the modern disco groove is almost irresistible for me (T-ara/Crayon Pop), but even with that aside, I feel like it’s one of his better singles.

While the music video for “Napal Baji” was clearly secondary to “Daddy”, at least we got shots like this.

Glorious.

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Hopefully Psy continues to piss off K-pop fans who take the genre way too seriously (omo stop embarrasing oppar and unnir juseyo) and keeps finding success, cause for all the backlash against his popularity, as a self-aware entertainer there’s really hardly anybody else I can think of that’s more deserving of support.