China Scorns Jay Chou's Claim to Psy's Horse Dance
By wchung | 18 Apr, 2026

Horse's Ass: Taiwan's top pop star embarrasses himself by claiming credit for Psy's horse dance.

Jay Chou, right, has claimed that Psy's Gangnam Style horse dance copies the one he did for his 2007 song Cowboy On the Run.

Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou appears to have shot himself in the foot with his recent claim that it was he, not Psy, who invented the horse dance that’s been rocking the world since the Korean rapper uploaded his “Gangnam Style” video in July.

“It is true that ‘Gangnam Style’ is comic but I never copied the dance,” Chou insisted during a press conference last week to promote his new album Opus 12. Chou is Taiwan’s top pop star as well as one of Asia’s most popular actors.

“Horse dance? Actually, I did it years ago in ‘Cowboy on the Run’,” Chou said, referring to a country-style song on his popular 2007 album On the Run.

Pressing his claim to the horse dance Psy has been performing continuously around the world since late August, Chou somewhat irrationally went on to declare a boycott against all things Korean.

“It wasn’t to hold back the Korean Wave, but to develop and progress out culture,” he explained more recently as criticism mounted and accusations that he is motivated by jealousy of Psy’s global success.

The problem for Chou is that the only similarity between Psy’s horse dance and the one he did in “Cowboy on the Run” is that both music videos show a horse stable in the background. Fans have found no discernible resemblance between either the actual moves or the accompanying songs. As a result netizens in the Chinese diaspora have questioned Chou’s good faith and even sanity.

The controversy appears to have bolstered Psy’s popularity in China. He was named “Person of the Year” by Weibo, China’s top microblogging site. Psy garnered about 190,000 of the votes cast by 400,000 participants. “Gangnam Style” has also made the top ten buzzwords of the year compiled by a popular Chinese magazine.

In the US, however, Psy didn’t make the top eight nominees for “Person of the Year” in the December 19 edition of USA Today. However, he is scheduled to perform on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve show from Times Square. His Gangnam Style video remains on track to become the first video ever to rack up 1 billion views by early January.