But the sort of multilingualism that allowed for both a French-language song (“Domenique”) and a Japanese one (“ Sukiyaki”) to become No. (The ’90s also saw the odd pop success of actual Latin: those chanting monks and Enigma’s Sadeness (Part 1)). Given that some 50 million people in the United States are of Hispanic origin, the market is certainly viable, and some Spanish-language songs have enjoyed crossover success.
Pop hasn’t gone entirely monolingual since: A Latin music boom emerged in the 1990s, giving rise to stars like Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, who occasionally sing in Spanish. In the 1950s and 1960s you could turn on the radio and hear a tune in Italian (“ Volare,” 1958), German (“ Sailor” 1960), or Xhosa (“ Pata Pata,” 1966). “Gangnam Style” is the first smash foreign-language song in the United States in years-and, with any hope, a sign of more to come-but it’s hardly the first. How to account for the more than 650 million YouTube views of “ Gangnam Style”? That jaunty dance surely deserves some credit, but might the faucalized voice and aspirated consonants of the Korean language play a part as well? It may seem unlikely, though perhaps no more unlikely than everything else about Psy’s megahit.
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