Psy's Gangnam Style broke YouTube

Rapper Psy. Photo / Getty Images

Gangnam Style is officially such a global phenomenon that it has broken YouTube.

Psy's viral hit, released in 2012, is still so popular on the video streaming site that the technology it uses to count views has had to be upgraded.

"We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (= 2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met Psy," a YouTube spokesperson wrote on the company's Google+ page.

"Gangnam Style has been viewed so many times we have to upgrade!"

Now, when you hover over the view counter on the Gangnam Style video, the numbers go crazy and start whirring - a "little math magic" according YouTube.

Psy puts the success of Gangnam Style down to "an accident" and insists that he has no expectations of matching it. Who could? You don't stumble upon that calibre of horse galloping dance moves every day.

The South Korean singer, record producer and rapper, 36, has 7.5 million YouTube subscribers and his channel has been visited more than 4 billion times since 2010.

In December 2012, he performed for President Obama wearing reindeer antlers for a special Christmas Style rendition. What a guy.

- Independent