10 Most unforgettable pop-culture moments in 2012

Who would have thought that out of nowhere, a Korean rapper by the name of Park Jae Sang aka Psy, would appear and take the world by storm with his majorly infectious tune “Gangnam Style”. Not only has he made appearances all over the world, performing on talkshows like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Ellen Show (teaching Britney Spears how to do the famous dance), he most recently performed for President Obama at the “Christmas in Washington” concert. Psy’s music video on Youtube has also been viewed over 1 billion times surpassing stars like Justin Bieber. Thankfully Singaporeans didn’t have to miss out on this global phenomenon when Psy dropped by Marina Bay Sands for a showcase to benefit a charity – we were definitely more than psy-ched.

Prince William and his Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, have been making headlines ever since their 2011 wedding and this year, as they embarked on their Jubilee tour as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, we saw them set foot on our little red dot of an island. Throw in a royal pregnancy into the mix and we couldn’t be more elated for the pair. In other news, we also saw a whole lot of Prince Harry this year, maybe just a tad more than we needed to. The rebel of the family made waves when he was photographed naked in a Las Vegas hotel room. As much as his hard partying ways are frowned upon by the royal family, we can’t help but love his bad boy streak.

It was the year of momentous breakups – from KStew cheating on RPattz (only the most desired man in the world after playing the blood-sucking Edward Cullen) to the sudden TomKat divorce to the uber cutie pie Selena Gomez dumping Justin Bieber. Just to set the record straight, we are definitely on Team Pattinson, Team Holmes and Team Gomez respectively. Hollywood weddings gave us quite the shock too, with sudden unions like Justin Timberlake finally settling down and tying the knot with Jessica Biel, plus our favourite Green Lantern Ryan Reynolds’ secret wedding to Gossip Girl Blake Lively.

At 48, her passing came as a shock to the entire music industry, and dying as a result of drug use was an added blow. The Grammy-award winning songstress left behind a legacy of soulful tunes and we lost one of the golden voices of this century. No one can ever top her rendition of “I Will Always Love You” and her chart-topping hits like “Greatest Love of All” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” will be on our iTunes playlist for a long time to come.

It’s no secret that K-Pop has exploded and claimed its stake on the world. Proof? South Korean band Big Bang’s latest world tour included 48 shows all over Asia and even the United States. Talk about making a Big Bang. We were also lucky enough to get a whole host of other K-Pop acts including Girl’s Generation, Super Junior, Shinee, TVXQ, Kim Hyun Joong, KARA, Wonder Girls, Beast and more who dropped by this year. Mark our words and watch this space, this kimchi love fest will continue thriving in 2013!

When it comes to satisfying the world’s voracious appetite for reading, serialised novels take the cake. We saw it with the action-packed Lord of The Rings series, The Game of Thrones series, the Harry Potter books and the latest young adult phenomenon The Hunger Games. This year, little did we expect, erotic fiction in the form of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy triumphs by selling over 65 million copies worldwide. The rabid fan base grew at such an exponential rate, a movie was already in the making before we could even say “go” and although we will never wrap our heads around how a novel about “a domineering love” could be anyone’s dream fairytale, we can’t help but be impressed by its pop-culture standing.

The best thing to ever come out of the London 2012 Olympics, besides the fabulously show-stopping opening ceremony, is to provide us with sporting eyecandy we never knew existed. Marcel Nguyen, Tom Daley and Ryan Lochte are just some of the droolsome athletes that provided more than enough reasons to park ourselves in front of the telly during this period.

We found out that our dear pop princess Rihanna might very well be back with her ex Chris Brown, not through news sources but through her Twitter and Instagram, two giant social media platforms. It may be “leaked” on purpose as both parties can’t seem to stop sharing photos of each other in suggestive places/poses. Other celebrities also take to social media to share impending news, like Jessica Simpson’s twitter announcement of her second pregnancy with her daughter Maxwell and the words “big sis” in the sand. Whatever it is, we hope they won’t stop, just to indulge the “stalkerazzi” in us, just like this picture of GDragon and Taeyang when they were in Singapore as seen from Taeyang’s instagram.

Carly Rae Jepsen taught us a lesson this year – fight for what you want. Her catchy ditty “Call Me Maybe” about her giving her number to a guy gives us girl-power chills, in a good Spice Girls-era way. And we have the Biebs to thank. While Jepsen was a relative unknown, the Biebs came across this catchy tune and enlisted Selena Gomez to film a lip-synced dance routine. It went viral and the rest is history. He signed Jepsen to his label and the song is now nominated for two Grammy Awards.

Everyone wants a piece of them, even Taylor Swift and Lindsay Lohan. We’re talking about none other than the two hottest Brit boybands around – The Wanted and One Direction. Serial-dater Swift has been seen canoodling with One Direction’s Harry Styles while Lohan has been seen partying with The Wanted’s Max George on more than one occasion. She even tweeted a picture of his sweatshirt saying “Missing something?” after spending a night together in NYC. Paramours aside, we’re glad that the boys do have enough talent to stick around for awhile, plying us with more tunes we can’t seem to get out of our head.