2018 truly belongs to BTS and the amount of awards they’ve managed to rack up at the last few year-end award shows is living proof of just how popular the boy group is. The annual Melon Music Awards recently held their ceremony on Saturday, December 1, 2018. In attendance at the award ceremony were idol groups BTS, BLACKPINK, Wanna One, iKON, and Mamamoo to rookies like (G)-IDLE and The Boyz.
BTS earned 7 awards at the award ceremony, including ‘Global Artist Award’ (which they also won at last year’s ceremony), ‘Netizen Popularity Award’, ‘Best Rap/Hip-hop Award’, and much more. Of course, the talk of the town were the three big winners of the night for 4 of the daesang categories:
- Artist of the Year – BTS
- Album of the Year – BTS (Love Yourself: Tear)
- Record of the Year – Wanna One
- Song of the Year – iKON (Love Scenario)
While daesang awards are usually the most controversial and are the awards that people pay the most attention to, this year’s MMA daesang winners were justifiable. I think we can all agree that BTS deserves to win the ‘Artist of the Year’ award as they’ve accomplished many amazing things this year that no other K-Pop group has been able to do. 2018 was truly BTS’s year. Their album ‘Love Yourself: Tear’ was also a solid and strong album with high album sales overall so I can see why they won another daesang for the album (it’s also my personal favorite album out of their ‘Love Yourself’ trilogy). ‘Love Scenario’ by iKON was also really popular when it came out among all ages (and is still going strong I believe) so their win was well-deserved if anything. Wanna One’s daesang ‘Record of the Year’ is the first year that the MMA’s has awarded anyone for the daesang so I guess time can only tell if the daesang will be a thing in the future.
Of course, we can’t talk about the MMA’s without acknowledging the performances. Since there weren’t as many performances at the MMA’s, the performers were able to focus on the quality of their performances and viewers clearly saw that. Everyone’s performances were pretty stellar. (G)-IDLE continues to prove to people why they’re deserving of the rookie of the year award and Wanna One and BLACKPINK showed fans why they were awarded the ‘Best Dance Awards.’ And then of course, BTS blew everyone away with their 20-minute performance. They started off with ‘Fake Love’ and then moved on to performing ‘Airplane Pt. 2’ and then finished with ‘IDOL.’ BTS really went all out with their performance by implementing and incorporating traditional aspects all throughout their ‘IDOL’ performance. It was a beautiful sight to see and the members themselves did amazing (Suga in particular was really into the performance, haha).
While watching BTS’s performance, I was already amazed with their intro for ‘Fake Love’ as they re-created the same exact pose that they did in one of their concept photos (that was pretty cool and nice). The dance break with J-Hope, Jimin, and Jungkook was also noteworthy; I loved seeing each member do a traditional dance to transition into the ‘IDOL’ performance which fully utilized traditional dancers, instruments, and much more. The last chorus of ‘IDOL’ was clearly the highlight of the performance when BTS elevated on stage and everyone came back out to join them. BTS’s performance was truly on another level and it makes me so proud to see them perform on such a level. It also makes me wonder what kind of other stages they’re planning for future year-end ceremonies. Will they be able to top their performance at the MMA’s?
The Melon Music Awards has had its fair of questionable and puzzling controversies and award winners, but I also find it to be one of the better award ceremonies. This year’s award ceremony was solid from award winners to performances. The daesang winners this year were understandable and justifiable, everyone’s performances were of quality content, and the show concluded with an amazing performance by one of K-Pop’s biggest groups. Here’s to hoping next year’s award ceremony will be just as solid.
MaryMeKpop 