Awards Shows, Industry Bias, Media Racism, and BTS

Okay. Here is an article I wrote a year ago (or maybe two years at this point), so it might not be completely relevant anymore. I wrote it, then let it sit, then came back to it again and almost posted it and then just let it sit again. There is so much more research I could do for this but here we are. I just want to put this out there. We have gone through another awards season and there's a handful of things we could chat about there as well. The writing of this article took place in 2022 and I often refer to “last year”, which is referring to the 2021 awards season. TLDR for the whole article: BTS are performance icons. There was a major racist caricature depicting BTS as whack-a-moles following the Grammys in 2021. The questions: "what is K-Pop? What is 'American'? Does any of the labelling even matter?"

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After months and months of silence from me on this blog, I’m back and remembering all the thoughts I had last year and over the awards season of the summer. Something I’ve been noticing this year and have finally worked up the energy to write about is how so many fully English songs by “K-pop artists” will still be labelled under “K-pop” because the artist does K-pop (in general). And again, we circle back to the question of “what is K-pop?” I also wonder if the artist has a say in how it’s labelled on Apple Music, etc or not.

So I got started writing this by looking at Korean-American singer Eric Nam’s new single, “I Don’t Know You Anymore”. It is categorized under “K-pop” despite the song being entirely in English. But Eric Nam does, in fact, do K-pop music. Which is just pop music. In Korean. Anyway… BTS’ “Dynamite”, is also under “K-pop”, again, despite being entirely in English. So here we have a Korean-American artist and a Korean-Korean group. The same thing is seen with BTS’ “Butter” and “Permission To Dance”. They’re POP songs. Which makes me think about the MTV VMAs, the American awards show, last summer, where "Butter" was nominated under “K-pop” as opposed to just “pop”. In that way, it feels very othering. Like the industry saying “even if you make ‘western’ music, sing, and speak in English, you’re still a foreigner.” Believe me, I’m happy to have them nominated in any categories. The more categories, the better, the more awards the better. But also, awards don’t actually mean anything. And that was evident with the Grammy Awards (and BTS being totally snubbed).

Let’s pause the Grammy Awards talk and that whole mess for a second while I go back to all my thoughts and feelings about the MTV VMAs and how that made me feel gross. SO.

At the 2021 MTV VMAs (nomination and winner list here https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/09/12/vmas-2021-complete-winners-list/5763431001/ ), BTS wasn’t nominated for Artist Of The Year despite being one of the biggest acts, if not THE biggest act this year. I do remember hearing that the VMAs, for whatever reason, wanted to split up categories for groups from solo artists, but then shouldn’t they change the title to “Solo Artist of the year” or something? Anyway, the whole thing just feels very excluding, but whatever. Ok, so “Dynamite” was nominated in the category of Song Of The Year but Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” won there. Ok. Fine, cool. Now this is where I was feeling weird: “Butter” was nominated in both Best Pop category and Best K-pop category. It lost to Justin Bieber ft Daniel Caesar and Giveon’s “Peaches" in Best Pop category but won in best K-pop category, despite it being a song entirely in English AND spending the entire summer setting massive records for ANY artist on the Billboard charts, spending 6 and then another 4 weeks at number 1 on the Global charts. I believe this year may have been the first year that the VMAs had a category for Best Group? Or it was just a category they announced way later than all the original nominations, but in any case, BTS was nominated there and they did win. Another sketchy thing that some people noticed about the VMAs awarding was that some of the awards were not audience voted, they were specifically “industry” or “panel” voted. The rules of the MTV VMAs also stated that they could overturn any results that were, in fact, voted by the public. In one specific case, the category of Best Choreography was panel voted (I believe) and BTS’ “Butter” lost to Harry Styles’ “Treat People With Kindness”. And if you’re wondering “oh, what? Does Harry Styles dance?” I’ll answer you with “mmm… I don't know?” And point you in the direction of this music video https://youtu.be/L0X03zR0rQk which has him… not really dancing, especially when compared to something like “Butter” https://youtu.be/WMweEpGlu_U which has major dancing and a whole ass dance break in the middle. Not to say that the dancing in Harry’s music video is bad, it’s just not the main point of the music video or the song, and that’s all well and good. In my opinion, it is not equally balanced to the effect of the music video’s aesthetic or the music itself. If you took the choreography away, you wouldn’t be missing anything. For “Butter”, of course you can take the choreography away and not miss much either but the amplified effect that the choreography has on the song, the performance, and the music video is on a different level. Both are good. Both are great. But they each achieve different things and are conceptualized differently.

(Photo: BTS from their 2021 Grammys Performance)

In BTS’ DNA (pun unintentional) as artists and as a whole group, dance is integral to what they do. They are incredible with and without it but their choreography gives their performances that extra push. It also takes that extra amount of effort to achieve the cleanliness, complexity, and unity as a group of 7. Dance is also just a massive element of K-pop as a “genre” (whatever that means) and culture. K-pop compared to American pop puts a lot more emphasis on performance, and dance performance in particular. There is almost always a “point dance”, meaning dance move or dance sequence that is the main part of the song/song’s choreography. The movement often tells the story, the vibe, and the concept of the music as much as the music itself. In these ways, it feels very musical theatre to me with the integration of performance, some acting, music, and dance.

Ok. Now popping back over to the mess that was the Grammy Awards for BTS. I don’t think I wrote about this at the time because it was surrounded with so much other racism and stuff that I really just couldn’t process, but to focus in on the whole mess that was the Grammy Awards, well, they were nominated for “Dynamite” for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. PERFORMANCE. They had performed 30+ different performances of “Dynamite” in the span of less than a year (August 2020 was “Dynamite”’s release and the Grammy Awards were the following April or May). BUT. who won the award? “Rain On Me” by Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that song, I love that music video and the choreography and everything, but they did ONE performance of that song. It just didn’t make any sense. Regardless, BTS got to perform on the Grammy Awards with a pre-taped performance of “Dynamite” that they filmed extravagantly in South Korea. That was a huge moment for them and for ARMY, the fandom, so I’m grateful and happy for that. (Even though they waited till the VERY END of the broadcast to show it. And their award wasn’t broadcast on television either so we didn’t actually get to see the boys at all.)

Anyway, I’ll emphasize this again. I’m happy that an Asian group was acknowledged in this big western way and were given a chance to perform on the show, which was huge and incredibly meaningful to them. But all the politics and the bias of the industry was so evident, as it tends to be in award shows. Yet we place so much importance on them.

Then, following the Grammy Awards, there was a trading cards/collectibles company that created a whole spread of Grammy Award related caricatures, and one of them being of BTS. In this caricature, the boys were portrayed as the moles in whack-a-mole. It’s graphic, terrible, racist, and encourages anti-Asian violence. In contrast to the other caricatures, this was the only one depicted in such a negative way. In a time when tons of Asian people were being physically attacked and abused, this pop culture piece decided to do the same thing to these pop stars. Due to all the backlash and (rightful) criticism, they quickly made an apology and stopped selling it (since it hadn’t gone into production yet), but the tone deaf-ness of it all really struck me. And this was the same day or the day before the Atlanta shooting had happened. It was at least the same night the news of the Atlanta shooting broke.

The K-pop songs that are then done in Japanese and released for Japan, that often include an original Japanese song or two done by a “K-pop” group, is still labelled under K-pop as well.

Something my brother said once was that these K-pop songs and artists sound a lot like American pop music, and I said that’s because the only difference is the language. Tons of American producers and writers are working with these K-pop groups and everything that they put out. Just check the credits. There are so many people that have a hand in making a single song that comes out of the K-pop idol groups. There are Korean producers and writers, there are some of the members that produce and write for the group, and there are American producers and writers. But also, who is to say that something sounds “American”? What is an “American” sound? This gets into a whole conversation about “what is America? Does American have its own culture?” Because ultimately, America is mostly a country made up of settlers and immigrants. The same goes for Canada. Settlers, immigrants, colonizers. These are all huge topics and thoughts I have. My brain is full of huge questions that don’t necessarily have answers to so I lay awake sometimes and just think about it. And I sometimes get a chance to write it down and throw it out into the ether like this.

So there you go.