Award ceremony
South Korea’s pop export BTS wins the American Music Awards
The K-pop superband BTS are the big American Music Awards winners. The boy band won in three categories. Photo: – / YNA / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The boyband concept is still popular, the latest evidence being the seven South Koreans from BTS. They were the big winners at the American Music Awards – and even pushed a permanent winner from the throne.
They are less renowned than the Grammys and the live performances don’t have the hip trend claim of the MTV Music Awards.
But something else creates tension at the American Music Awards: The AMA is the largest award in the US music industry that is given directly by the audience via online voting.
A change of guard took place at the awards ceremony on Sunday in Los Angeles, which shows who will be able to mobilize the largest fan base in 2021. For the first time, the South Korean boy band BTS won the most important award of the evening as “Artist of the Year”. The group of seven stood out among others, singer Taylor Swift, who last received this award three times in a row.
In any case, the entire three-hour award ceremony was dominated by the globally successful K-Pop phenomenon (derived from “Korean Popular Music”): BTS appeared at the beginning of the show with the hit band Coldplay and sang “My Universe”, they received before Main prize has already been awarded for best pop group and for “Butter” as best pop song – and they ended the evening dressed in yellow with a performance of this hit single. Hundreds of mask-wearing fans in the Microsoft Theater celebrated the two appearances and all three acceptance speeches with deafening screams.
Swift received awards for “Evermore” as Pop Album of the Year and Pop Artist of the Year. The 31-year-old has already won 34 AMAs in the course of her career, a record in the history of the award, which has been awarded since 1973. In second place in the all-time ranking is Michael Jackson with 26 prizes, according to the industry magazine “Billboard”.
Newcomer Olivia Rodrigo had hoped for more
The evening went less well for newcomer Olivia Rodrigo (18, “Drivers License”), who had previously led the nomination field with seven entries. She could only win a prize in the new artist category. Canadian singer The Weeknd (“Blinding Lights”) was nominated six times, but only won in the male R&B artist category.
The Italian ESC winner Maneskin (“Beggin”) also went away empty-handed. They were subject to rapper Megan Thee Stallion (“Body”) in the newly created “Trending Song” category for songs that are particularly popular on the Tiktok social network. Maneskin’s appearance was still cheered – as was that of Zoe Wees. The 19-year-old from Hamburg had already appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show in the USA and sang “Girls Like Us” with the AMA.
In addition, as every year, the awards were characterized by a high degree of connectivity with a broad audience. There were no biting moderation comments from rapper Cardi B, any more than the political statements in acceptance speeches or laudations that are now common at US award shows. Instead, a great marketing spirit often shaped the garishly staged show, in which every appearance came along with a hashtag for social networks displayed live.
For example, actors Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler showed excerpts from a remake of the “West Side Story” that will start in US cinemas at Christmas, shot by Steven Spielberg – and although Christmas is not even over, Jennifer Lopez sang the title song of her first The romance “Marry Me” scheduled for Valentine’s Day in February, again in the immediately following commercial break, supplemented by the trailer for the film.
The “Battle of Boston”, on the other hand, was a nice staging idea, a test of strength between two of the city’s greatest success bands from the 1980s, in which the New Kids on the Block (“Step by Step”) responded to the R&B combo New Edition (“Candy Girl”) met. In the end, however, both of your medleys underlined only one thing: the world’s most successful sound in the boy band genre is now made in Asia.