South Korean rapper-singer Psy's hit-single "Gangnam Style" on Friday rose to the top of a major chart of the U.S. music publication Billboard boosted by the viral popularity of the song's music video on the Internet.
"Gangnam Style" sits on top of Billboard's "Social 50" chart, beating famous North American pop stars such as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber as well as British idol group One Direction and rock band Muse as of Friday, according to Billboard's Web site.
The Social 50 chart ranks the most popular artists on such social networking services as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, using a formula that blends weekly additions of friends, fans and followers along with weekly artist page views and weekly song plays.
Also on Friday, "Gangnam Style" ranked second in the Billboard's World Albums chart and 24th in the Heatseekers Albums, a Billboard chart for up-and-coming singers.
In addition, the song rose to the 40th place on U.S. iTune's "Top 100 Songs Chart" that day, four notches up from 44th on Tuesday.
Psy, whose Korean name is Park Jae-sang, is not well known outside his country but rose to stardom on YouTube for the "Gangnam Style" music video in which he demonstrates a comical horse-riding dance.
Interest in the singer has doubled since the video was covered by major foreign news media such as CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and the weekly news magazine Time this month.
The video has drawn more than 77 million views on YouTube as of early Friday.
"Oppa You're My Style," a sequel to the hit music video, has also attracted more than 21 million views.
(Yonhap News)
