BTS at 2020 MAMA: "ON," "Dynamite," and "Life Goes On"

First things first, congratulations to BTS on winning nine awards today at the 2020 Mnet Asian Music Awards, including the four Daesang: Worldwide Icon of the Year, Song of the Year for "Dynamite," Album of the Year for Map of the Soul: 7, and Artist of the Year! This is the second year they have won all four Daesang at MAMA — a clean sweep —  and are the first artists in history to ever achieve this. 

We knew BTS was going to be performing last — the last stage at Korean award shows is reserved for the artist with the greatest achievements, honour, and/or popularity of the year — but this award show ending up being 6.5 HOURS LONG, starting at 4:00AM and ending at 10:30AM, and it almost killed me. (Even Suga, who's recovering from surgery at home and was watching MAMA on TV along with us, got sick of waiting and by 8:52AM, he commented on Weverse: "When are they coming on...?") But despite having to sit through six hours of goddamn stages, speeches, and presenters speaking for way too long, I still gotta say: BTS' PERFORMANCE WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT.




They rented out Seoul World Cup Stadium and had a 100-person marching band to perform "ON" including an INCREDIBLE dance break complete with gymnasts doing flips, break-dancing drummers, and pyrotechnics in the background. They performed "Dynamite" in a gigantic, rainbow-coloured tent that collapsed to reveal the most colourful lit-up stage you've ever seen which then switched to a nightscape to launch colourful fireworks. Finally, they segued into a scene of a city street to perform "Life Goes On," featuring a set completely devoid of colour with people painted white in face masks to show the bleakness of the world during this pandemic, with a holographic Suga appearing on the scene to rap his part in the song, and ending with Jin throwing up a purple ball of light to the sky to change the colourless world into one of vibrant, saturated colour again while they sing, "I remember."

I'm always in awe of how BTS make every single stage feel totally different, like I'm watching them perform these songs for the first time, every time. I watched all the other performances from all the other K-pop artists at MMA yesterday and MAMA today, so I'm saying this as unbiased as I can be as an ARMY, but no one can compare to BTS. Honestly. Haters are gonna say whatever they want, but these performances are just more proof as to why BTS is so successful and why they're beating everyone in this industry and why they break so many records. The originality, the creativity, the work ethic, and the pure talent and skill that they have is unparalleled.