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Celeb News: PSY: Jail, Drugs, Abuse and "Desperate" Need for Attention
Member Since: 4/23/2011
Posts: 16,377
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PSY: Jail, Drugs, Abuse and "Desperate" Need for Attention
It's long, but an interesting read.
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The trouble with Psy
CAMILLA LONG
THE Korean pop star Psy sits in a small airless room in black harem pants and bare feet.
In front of him there are three packets of cigarettes, but will 60 cigarettes be enough? He smokes incessantly, and when he isn't smoking, he is asking anxiously for translation, and when he isn't asking anxiously for translation, he's telling me about his childhood and his abusive father, his "desperate" need for attention and his time in jail, about the drink, the drugs, and the lies.
He drinks all day and all night. Korean vodka is his "best friend" and his "vice partner". He'll also drink "whisky, tequila, whatever," he sighs. "If I'm happy, I'm drinking, if I'm sad, I'm drinking. If it's raining, I'm drinking, if it's sunny, I'm drinking. If it's hot, I'm drinking, if it's cold, I'm drinking." Is there any point where he isn't drinking? "When I'm hungover," he says. How often is he hungover? "A lot."
Psy, 35, is proof that pop can make you sad, mad and lonely, and that you will need a lot of Korean vodka if you have a hit that takes you from a nobody to Justin Bieber in a few weeks. Since he released the narcotic Gangnam Style on the internet in July last year, he has performed the song's lassoing donkey dance more than 1000 times. He has visited "20 countries and 50 cities". He has met United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US President Obama. He moves city every three days. He hasn't seen his wife or children since April. Every time his plane lands or takes off, he feels older. "I'm not scared, but it's too much," he rasps. "The flights!"
He insists he is still living the dream "every week". He has just lived dreams "No 1 and No 2". His first dream was meeting Brian May for brunch, because Queen inspired him to become a singer when, at the age of 12, he saw a videotape of Freddie Mercury playing London's Wembley Stadium. The second dream was playing Wembley himself, which he did as part of a big concert in July. "Robbie Williams just stopped by my green room and said, 'Hey, let's do something.' I was like, ****!" he squeaks. Dreams No 3 and 4 include collaborating with Madonna and performing with MC Hammer, both of which he achieved last year.
Now that he has appeared at Wembley, he "literally has everything", he says, including a follow-up song, Gentleman, which already has over 530 million hits on YouTube. Gentleman is the same as Gangnam Style, but even less sophisticated. While Gangnam was a satire on the clothes and habits of Gangnam, an area of Seoul equivalent to Beverly Hills, Gentleman is a satire on "assholes". Psy poses as a "gentleman" in the video, but is shown pushing girls over and failing to buy them drinks. The mystery as to whether Psy is a good guy or bad guy "makes Psy hotter as a product", he drawls. He pronounces hotter as "hadder". I think he only understands 50 per cent of what I'm saying. "His English is ... " the manager trails off. Last year, he appeared on a talk show where the host had to explain why someone had described his song as the "herpes of music". "He doesn't always get everything," adds the manager.
Twelve years ago, when he was plain Park Jae-sang, he turned down the opportunity to take over his father's "really boring and strange" semiconductor equipment company to become a pop star, but a large part of him is still that failed Korean middle manager. He makes his way precisely through the interview in English learnt from Twitter (it is strange to hear a 35-year-old man talk of "haters"). He speaks about his songs with heart-rending emotion, explaining how he cried during a concert in Seoul when he flew over the World Cup Stadium on a wire singing a Korean love song. "At the top of the sky," he says, "I cried." Why? Because "nobody has ever tried to fly on a wire over the World Cup Stadium".
If anything, he is a frustrated cruise-ship singer who has played to nearly 200,000 people in Seoul and is now so famous that whenever he arrives in a country he is automatically presented with that country's most famous Korean. In England he is presented with Park Ji-sung, the midfielder for London soccer club Queens Park Rangers. In America he is presented with Ban Ki-moon, who said he was "jealous" of Psy because Ban was "the most famous Korean in the world" until Psy turned up. "You're so cool," cooed the secretary. "Meeting Ban Ki-moon was strange," says Psy.
In Korea, he is presented with nobody. This is because he cannot leave his house. He says fans will rugby tackle him "for hugging". He thinks this is "good!" because he loves "touches". He loves running around the barricades after concerts. "I'm high-fiving them, and I love it," he says. He has always been "desperate for attention", or at least is "happy that other people are happy", he corrects himself, ever since he was a cheerleader at school and realised he was intoxicated by the crowd. He is, simply, a world-class show-off. The problem is that Psy is so "exciting" and "funny" he has to keep fans at arm's length. "I'm the kind of person who has a lot of boy followers," he sighs. What about groupies? "Groupies?" he says. "What is groupies?" The manager says: "If you've got a concert and there are girls who want to ... " "Oh!" says Psy. "Important question! So, when I do a concert, there are many beautiful girls, and I'm singing and they're like ... " [he makes a sign for 'love'] "and I feel the same way! I have so many beautiful ladies," he moans, but his love for them is "official" rather than "private". The fact he cannot have affairs is a "tragedy", but "that's the end of the story".
He is married to Yoo Hye-yeon, a former cello player, with whom he has five-year-old twin girls. "Being apart is never good," he says. "As a father, I want to see my kids as many days as possible. But as a composer and performer, emotion-wise, I have to live like a single man." This may explain rumours he was having an affair with his Gangnam co-star, 22-year-old YoonA. YoonA dismissed the story, saying the whole thing was so silly she considered greeting photographers at the airport with a rendition of the donkey dance the day after the news broke (a response that, if nothing else, demonstrates how, for a time last year, the donkey dance seemed like the answer to almost everything). London mayor Boris Johnson claimed he had done it with David Cameron at Chequers, the PM's country retreat; Michelle Obama said her husband had tried it.
Psy spent a month conceiving the dance with a group of choreographers. He "did every animal. We did this slithering on the floor that we called the snake dance. Then someone turned on the TV and there was a horse galloping across a yard". He felt immense pressure to come up with a good dance for Gentleman and tried out 50 dances before he chose the final one. (It's the same as the donkey dance.) He started dancing and playing practical jokes when he was "like nine, 10". He was born into a "wealthy" family in Gangnam. His mother owns several restaurants. His family had begged him to go into the family business, because he was "the only son. Uncles, aunts, the whole family, only daughters", he says. But he was terrible at figures and didn't like being told what to do. His father would try to persuade him and beat him "a lot ... all the time. He just didn't get it. He was like, 'Why is my son not academic? His only interest is in getting attention from girls.' He was so frustrated." "Ancient Psy", as his father is now called, was "very strict", even by Korean standards, and carried on hitting him even as an adult, until he wrote a song in 2006 about his father's "loneliness" and the "huge barrier between us", and he heard from his mother that his father had decided he was going to make more of an effort. "I thought, 'wow, the power of music'," he says. The song is now available as a ringtone. The manager cuts in and tells me not to make a big deal of the hitting. "It isn't a serious matter. It's [only] corporal punishment," he shrugs. "It's very customary."
His parents made a final attempt to salvage his academic career by sending him to Boston University in 1996, but he failed to get a degree from Boston or the Berklee College of Music, where he secretly enrolled using the money his father had given him. His parents were "totally pissed" when he came back - after four years, without good English - but he carried on composing on his computer and sending out demos. In 2000, he was spotted doing a dance on television. The next year he released his first album. He gave himself the name "Psy", a mixture of his nickname "Sai" and "psycho", debuting with an act so bizarre, nobody is still quite sure whether he is a comedian, rapper, singer or sex pest. The producers at his label were expecting "a 6ft tall, sharp, trendy-looking guy" and were horrified when he turned up. They immediately held a meeting to improve his image. Someone suggested "a cool mask". Another suggested plastic surgery. But Psy refused. He is now proud that "I got famous with this kind of body! Most celebrities are skinnier than me or taller than me and have smaller faces than me or bigger eyes than me." Would he ever change his body? "It's too late," he sighs. "It's too late."
There were moments when he nearly gave up. "But I was desperate to be a better person than my father," he says. "So I tried really hard. I wanted to tell him some day, 'Your way is not the only way'." His relationship with his father is the reason "why I'm not going to have a son". He gives a bellow of laughter. He doesn't know how he would put up with a boy. His parents were always "like, oh, Jesus, no," he explains. Everything he did went spectacularly wrong. He was fined for explicit lyrics in his second album and arrested for possession of marijuana in 2001. "I was 23, in my first year as artist. I went to jail for 25, 26 days." Going to jail was "a horrible fall". His parents refused to bail him out. His father shook his hand and told him to use it as an opportunity to give up smoking.
Did he think going to jail made him focus? "Spending that kind of period [in jail] is not good, especially as a member of my family," he says. "But as an artist, the more experience, the better the creation. I'm a very positive person. So if **** happens, I think maybe this happens because a huge amount of happiness is coming to me." Did he get beaten up? The manager cuts in. "There's nothing to say about it," he says. Psy holds his paws up. "All right," he says. "You're the first person I've talked to about my arrest. I just wanted to be sincere. But if you want details, it's a bad memory. Even my wife's gonna say, 'Why did you talk about jail?'?" His time in jail was "****". He lights another cigarette. "There are no nice jails [in Korea], OK?" He nevertheless "recovered as an artist, and made another huge hit song". The song's title was typically modest: Champion. Part of his punishment was to complete military service, which he tried to dodge by getting his uncle to convince the head of a computer software company to employ him and exempt him from enlistment. The authorities became suspicious when he gave 52 concerts and appeared on TV while he was meant to be programming computers. They took him to court and he completed the draft in 2009.
The total revenue from all his global sales still hasn't arrived. "I'm still waiting," he says. He looks nervous: "It's got to arrive within a year." Tomorrow, he flies to Toronto, then Shanghai, then Indonesia, then he has to put out his next album, which will contain "proper songs". When will it all stop? "I don't know," he whispers.
Psy's new album is due out this month.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news....T4kjs94S.dpuf
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Member Since: 1/12/2012
Posts: 18,340
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Member Since: 2/23/2012
Posts: 428
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Quote:
Originally posted by JC▼
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Welcome to fame, Psy.
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Member Since: 2/13/2012
Posts: 62,082
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Member Since: 8/25/2012
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Member Since: 3/27/2009
Posts: 30,284
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Let's just go ahead and close this thread.
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Member Since: 4/30/2012
Posts: 16,573
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I'm the only one that thought this was an interesting article? oh.
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 483
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/1/2012
Posts: 15,668
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Poor PSY
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 1,888
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I thought this was an interesting reading. Thank you for posting it OP
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Member Since: 5/31/2008
Posts: 11,688
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rihhyonce
I'm the only one that thought this was an interesting article? oh.
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I thought it was interesting. 
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Member Since: 4/30/2012
Posts: 16,573
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Quote:
Originally posted by ohjulia
I thought this was an interesting reading. Thank you for posting it OP
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Originally posted by madonnafan18
I thought it was interesting. |
It's fascinating how this success has been what PSY has always wanted, but it doesn't seem as if he's truly happy.
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Member Since: 7/22/2010
Posts: 16,134
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Why does this article have me in tears 
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Member Since: 8/11/2012
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Member Since: 3/23/2011
Posts: 4,436
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Member Since: 3/27/2009
Posts: 30,284
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rihhyonce
I'm the only one that thought this was an interesting article? oh.
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Not at all, I thought the same.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 2/9/2012
Posts: 10,326
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Originally posted by SyntaxError
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But seriously, he sounds very tragic.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 11,649
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Interesting read. Sucks that fame has made him both happy yet sad.
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 6,308
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Who? What? Where?
And more importantly why should I care?
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 9,314
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This is very interesting
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