'Gangnam Style' exceeds 1 billion views on YouTube

By Mikael Wood

Dec. 22, 2012 2:07 PM PT

Last month we brought you news that the viral video for Psy’s “Gangnam Style” had supplanted Justin Bieber’s “Baby” as the most-viewed clip of all time on YouTube.

Was that enough for the South Korean pop star, who just bought a condo in L.A.’s Blair House? Hardly: On Friday Psy’s horse-dancing spectacle became the first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views -- an astonishing number he’d already left in the dust by Saturday afternoon, at which point “Gangnam Style” had been seen an additional 17 million times.

That puts the video (which you can watch below) more than 200 million views ahead of “Baby.”

“We just set out to try and make some history, break down barriers and prove a song in Korean could go all the way,” said School Boy Records chief Scooter Braun in a statement. (Braun, who also manages Bieber’s career, took on Psy as a client earlier this year.) “This is a remarkable accomplishment and a testament to music being the universal language.”

Added Psy, who’s set to perform on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” later this month, “I didn’t even imagine ‘Gangnam Style’ would get 1 million views, let alone 1 billion views!”

He’s surely not the only one.