Whole World, come to MAMA!

this is certainly one of the biggest musical events in singapore.

a certain group in super junior sent fangirls crazy in their recent singapore concert, while their label-mates girls generation will also be performing in the full sold-out indoor stadium come december.

as if that wasnt enough. for the mnet asian music awards 2011, plenty of idols groups and music artistes made their way to our tiny island for mnet asian music awards! super junior, girls generation, 2ne1, 4minute, miss a, beast, baek ji young, seo in young... and the list goes on. not only was the yummy event graced by popular singers, it was also hosted by popular celebrities like lee byung hun, song joong ki, kim hee sun and oh ji ho.

noticeably though, kara and rainbow from dsp did not attend.

the good

2ne1 bagged one of the biggest awards of the ceremony, winning the song of the year with 'i am the best'. deservedly so, given their enterprising brand of music. i feel they could also have won it with 'ugly' and 'lonely'. they also won the best vocal performance (group) with 'lonely'. their big brothers big bang, although as impressive with their music, unfortunately only came away with the best music video award, which must be a real bummer.

in an era dominated by pop artistes, i must say baek ji young has done very well. an exceptional ballad singer into her mid-30s, she won the award for the best female singer (solo) and best original soundtrack with 'that woman', popularized by secret garden. 真是宝刀未老!

the bad

i was looking forward to the live performances, but i was left feeling disappointed. watching korean music shows on 4 korean channels every week have trained me to differentiate between live and lip-synched performances. there was a certain element of 'live' to most dance performances (the mics are still on for you to sing into), but they were heavily backed with background singing, such that it didnt really matter whether if the singers attempt to sing or not.

it is perhaps because they choose focus on the visuals instead of the vocals in front of such a big audience. i guess it can be justified, given that your singing would get drowned by the screaming fans anyway. either the sound captured on tele is terrible or the fans were terribly sporting/desperate, because all i heard on tv was the fans screaming their lungs out. plus a bit of the performance itself. it didnt matter if 99% of the fans cant understand the songs and the speeches, they were just happy to be there.

one thing for sure though, jane zhang sang live (but theres no reason for not singing a ballad live). snoop dogg and dr dre too.

the ugly

inviting snoop dogg and dr dre must have helped greatly in spicing up the atmosphere and creating awareness for the ceremony. but it wasnt pretty listening to their rap performance on-screen, as a good portion of their rap has to be censored in order to be broadcasted. so you get disrupted by pockets (or even chunks) of total silence here, there and everywhere, throughout their performance. very disturbing.

the thing that impressed me the most over the course of the whole show? sandara parks hair! simply refreshing to look at :D

seriously, how many cans of hairspray do you need to make it stay that way. full marks for visuals!