The MAMA Awards has potential to be the big American awards show K-pop deserves

When BTS ended Justin Bieber’s reign by winning the Billboard Awards’ Top Social Artist in 2017, a year that also marked “the first big moment for K-pop on American television,” K-pop fans dared to hope. Wonder Girls had become the first Korean act to break into the American Hot 100 almost a decade earlier.

Since then, American award shows have been catching up. The AMAs created the first K-pop category in a significant U.S. awards show in 2022. However, as talented as the artists are, American producers have never been able to fully showcase K-pop with the extravagance and creative camerawork their Korean counterparts are known for. And face it: What makes music awards shows (or any awards show, for that matter) worth watching are exciting performances and unscripted moments.

So when the MAMA Awards, Korea’s biggest music awards show in scale and influence, came to the Dolby Theater in Hollywood Thursday night, it was a big deal for fans of K-pop. The massive show, which has taken place in recent years in cities across Asia, would be hosted in the U.S. for the first time in its 25-year history and spread across three days. L.A. hosted the first event in a more intimate theater setting; on Nov. 22 and 23, it’s in Osaka, Japan’s Kyocera Dome.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2024-11-22/mama-awards-k-pop-dolby-theater-anderson-paak-jyp-dustin-hoffman