Kpop fans generally look forward to year-end awards and song festivals, for during this time of the year, Kpop idols will bring to stage never-seen-before performances and collaborations. However, in 2022, many fans have been complaining that a lot of them feel lackluster.
Below are the reason why these year-end events have been failing to make a deep impression:
Lack of famous artists from previous generations
Most gen 2 and 3 artists were absent from award ceremonies and song festivals at the end of 2022, and instead, the events are filled with 4th generation idols and rookies. As a result, compared to previous years, many people find these events to be lacking.
The absence of BTS and BLACKPINK, in particular, has already “cooled down” these events by a large chunk.
The absence of big names has had a significant impact on both the audience attendance and the topicality effect on social networking sites. A typical example is the state of MMA 2022 – one of Korea’s most prestigious awards ceremonies, which had a lot of empty seats due to lack of groups with a large fan base.
In terms of topicality, most netizens on online communities only discussed the owners of the awards, and rarely about the impressive and explosive performances..
In addition to the problem of participating artists, the awards ceremonies at the end of 2022 lacked spectacular stages, performances, and investments, which shows off idols’ impressive performance techniques. Even for MAMA, the awards ceremony normally considered to have the most explosive stages of Kpop, seem to lack highlights due to being overseas, which lead to idols having little preparation time.
In previous years, the audience has witnessed eye-catching, quality, and dedicated stages from Kpop idols. Unfortunately, they can barely see that in 2022, where very few stages manage to deeply impress viewers. There is also the matter of lip syncing and poor remixes, which can reduce greatly the excitement of fans.
Despite the absence of big names, the lineup of artists at year-end’s awards ceremonies in 2022 all hold huge potential, with impressive achievements and public recognition.Therefore, while a lot of people were disappointed, there are still many others looking forward to the explosive performances of these artists.
However, since most of these groups had been rookies and thus lack stage experience, they simply cannot deliver as jaw-dropping presence as their seniors.
Finally, the year-end stages of these groups were not much different from those on weekly music shows, with little changes in the arrangement and choreography. Of course, there were short dance breaks, but these simply weren’t refreshing enough to blow the audience away.
Not quite impressive collaborations and covers
In the past, collaborations were among the most highly-anticipated elements from year-end-stage. However, this is not the case for 2022, seeing that most of these “collaborations” fall short of expectations.
In addition, cover stages of hits from seniors – which is a “specialty” of SBS Gayo Daejeon, failed to achieve an explosive effect this year, despite boasting the appearance of highly-popular 4th gen girl groups. Moreover, since most artists are rookies, many hesitate to show different colors of themselves and display their full charisma. This leads to a lot of stages lacking in climax and thus, are considered forgettable in the netizens’ eyes.
Meanwhile, regarding collaborations, the 2022 MAMA raised huge attention by teasing a stage that combines top 4th gen female rookies. However, instead of this becoming a legendary performance, the award ceremony ended up with rush preparation and a stage that feels like a Kpop in public dance challenge. There were barely any stage decorations, no remixes, and a lot of members could do nothing but awkwardly stand when their groupmate performed .
In addition, there was barely any interaction between the groups, leading to the performance feeling disjointed. Even the stage clothes are completely different, so the stage barely feel like a collaboration at all.
The rookie collaboration at 2022 MAMA received a lot of mixed reviews
Finally, since later generations are afraid of “fanwars”, interaction, even during collaboration are highly limited. Stages between male and female idols, for example, now show the idols dancing separately instead of together, perhaps in fear of dating news.
In fact, this has been a trend in recent years, with the “Bloom The Sound” collaboration stage at the 2021 MAMA being a prime example.
The collaboration stages of Gen 4 idols is disappointing because they don’t perform together
Meanwhile, in previous generations, idols can freely interact and collaborate, even pair up on stage to deliver impressive and unforgettable performances. It’s been a long time since Kpop fans have been able to witness ground-breaking interactions, where even dating rumors are integrated into the performance like during the 2nd generation era.
Is there hope?
Despite the dwindling interest and expectations for year-end K-pop awards and ceremonies, 2024 has seen some hope.
In particular, the artist line-up for the 2024 MAMA Awards is confirmed to include many notable names of the previous generations.
For instance, G-Dragon has confirmed his MAMA appearance, and with the male idol dropping a song featuring other BIGBANG members and the trio’s airport appearance, there is a likelihood that the audience of MAMA will see BIGBANG reunite.
Meanwhile, BLACKPINK’s Rosé is also going to appear on the 2nd day of MAMA, and is expected to bring to life her latest hit, “APT.”, alongside top tier pop-star Bruno Mars.
With such names appearing on the performers’ list, a bright hope has been sparked for the 2024 MAMA, and perhaps, for Korean music awards altogether.
Source: k14
