On saturday, December 5th, and Sunday, December 6th, two award shows were held in Korea: the Melon Music Awards (MMA) and the Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA). These awards that once saw historical performances, have been losing relevancy each year and increasingly confining themselves into a bubble where they chase the audiences of specific fandoms rather than the general public.
Melon Music Awards continued its struggle of having fewer artists each year who are crowned among the top 10 artists of the year by the platform. In 2020, only 4 of them attended the award: BTS, Iz*one, Lim Young-woong and Oh My Girl, a decrease from 2019, which saw just half of the awarded artists appearing on the ceremony, and way behind the years from 2016 to 2018, where 8 of the 10 selections decided to attend. Matter of fact, 2020 became the first time since the inception of the award back in 2009 where less than half of those selected went to the show.
The show altered its structure of one night of awards to a four-day online broadcast dubbed as "MMA Week". It speaks volumes about the lack of interest on the show that not even a cable network showed interest on broadcasting it, as opposed to past years when JTBC took the duties of showing it on television. Days 1 to 3 even felt like an attempt to shrink the main ceremony, by giving some minor awards in advance such as best original soundtrack and best new artist. In the end the lack of performers willing to attend the show was so concerning that Melon had to call boy bands who didn't even get any nominations such as TXT, Monsta X and The Boyz to fill the award and also as an attempt to attract a more fandom based audience to stream the award. TXT even got the 2nd most performance time only behind their seniors BTS. In fairness to MMA at least the show wasn't essentially a BTS solo concert like in 2019, with the popular boy band performing for 20 fewer minutes than last year. The running time of the award was also nearly cut in half, going from 4 hours over the past few years to just a little over 2 hours and 10 minutes in 2020.
On the following day, Mnet, Korea's top music-oriented channel, held the 22nd edition of its music awards. MAMA, as its mostly known, has suffered a huge decline in prestige when acts of what's called the 2nd generation of k-pop largely left the scene and gave room for 3rd generation acts. You can pinpoint on the graphic exactly where this happened, as MAMA ratings took a tumble from 2015 to 2016 and never recovered. Even the small bounce backs in 2017-18 due to the fact that the public at least got accustomed to such new artists and these acts popularity in Korea increased over that span, it still resulted on ratings 50% lower than the heydays of the show. In 2020, it wasn't any different, matter of fact MAMA ratings tied 2016 for the lowest ever, posting a 1.2 rating for the ceremony.
For 2020, Mnet's bet was the return of SM Entertainment artists to the lineup. The label, who had been absent from the award since 2017 and even pulled out from Mnet's weekly music show MCountdown in 2018, had finally made amends with the channel. The first movement came earlier this year when Girls' Generation member Hyoyeon joined the lineup of Mnet's new show "Good Girl". By the time SM's new main boy band NCT had made their 2020 comeback, SM had already fully made peace with Mnet and they were able to perform on MCountdown.
The SM lineup brought to MAMA in 2020 was quite different from that one they had in 2017. Gone were Exo and Red Velvet, the main groups of the company back in the day. In was a mix of old and new, with Shinee member Taemin and legendary singer BoA representing the former, while groups such as NCT and Aespa (through its member Winter) representing the latter. In predictable fashion, SM made everything on their power to make NCT stand out: all their subunits had performances under a themed stage called "Resonance of NCT". The group actually got more performance time than BTS itself, spending over 22 minutes on stage. However, the most buzz out of any SM performance went to BoA's 20th Anniversary Special, with the singer getting both a tribute stage and an individual performance that drew many praises.
However, amidst so many 10-minute long performances, turns out it was the one with the shortest screen time that made the most waves: the collaboration stage between (G)I-DLE (Soyeon, Soojin and Yuqi) and Oh My Girl (Mimi, Jiho and Arin) members to perform Miss A's classic "Bad Girl Good Girl". Despite it being just 2 minutes long, it was the stage that trended the highest in Korea and even earned the support of a Miss A member Fei. The performance being the most trendy of the award shouldn't surprise anyone, considering that both groups were one of the few attendants of the show who had reached audiences besides their fandom bubble and had quite good chart performances in 2020, particularly Oh My Girl, who emerged from a mid-level girl group status prior this year to scoring two hits in "Nonstop" and "Dolphin". (G)I-DLE also had a decent performing song of their own in "Dumdi Dumdi", which has so far been their song that has lasted the longest on Korean charts. Both groups have members with good public recognition, something that can't be said of many boy bands who got more performance time than them such as Ateez, Cravity and Treasure, which in many cases struggle to even chart in the top 1000, proving how MAMA and other awards have increasingly become a fandom-oriented bubble. By the way, all these three boy bands got at least one award from Mnet, meanwhile, (G)I-DLE and Oh My Girl were shut out despite being way more successful.
Finally, it isn't MAMA if there is no controversy. The one from this year is the fact that idols and their staffers were left to wait in the cold before their performances, given no waiting rooms were provided, with some of them having to wait inside their cars. Meanwhile, actors had comfortable waiting rooms. It's not a secret the difference in perception between actors (who are worshiped) and idols (who are considered the lowest level of entertainers) in Korea. This one just highlights the hierarchy inside the industry perfectly and of course it had to come from the award where controversy is not a bug but rather a feature.
In conclusion, the more awards have catered to fandoms, the more irrelevant they have become. And they aren't the only ones, since that's an industry-wide movement. The choice for inflated sales by milking fans to the last drop as opposite to try to find a more casual audience has turned the idol world into a bubble the average music listener at their own country is less familiar with each day. Quite a difference from the years of the 2nd generation where many pop stars were household names.
PS #1: I mentioned SM Entertainment's return to MAMA but they weren't the only label from the now archaic Big 3 to make its comeback to the show. YG Entertainment, the k-pop company version of a pain in the ass, also made its first appearance on MAMA since 2015, when it ruled the night with big performances from Psy, 2NE1 and that night's biggest winners Bigbang. They brought their globally popular girl group Blackp... wait, who am I kidding? They brought their new shining toys Treasure, who are the first YG group in history to chart like they are from some garage label.
PS #2: I feel bad for Weeekly. They took rookie of the year on the girl group side on both awards but didn't touch the stage in any of them, only did acceptance speeches. This must be a first. Sums up how sad the situation of the 2020 girl group rookie class is right now. All that while having to deal with the anger of Secret Number fans. Between this, the main girl groups from 2020 debuting after eligibility for the awards had expired and the overall anonymous status of the group, there isn't much to celebrate.
PS #3: here are some pictures of Girls' Generation (former?) member turned actress Sooyoung on her stunning red carpet dress at MAMA. They don't have any context related to the article aside from the fact that she took part at the awards but given how beautiful she looked I decided to leave a few here. So beautiful she should win a daesang.
LOOK AT HER 🔥 #2020MAMA pic.twitter.com/v9tDzHb6WU
— Girl Group Zone! (@girlgroupzone) December 6, 2020
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