As we tune into the first ever YouTube Music Awards, we are greeted by the YouTube logo screen. The screen fades out and we are shown a simple scene with a girl waking up in the morning and getting on her laptop to start her day. Words flash, in English and Korean, across the screen between scenes and a voice intones ” There is a world that is known to everyone. There is a world that is known to no one. There is happiness and sadness. On YouTube, there is a star we love. And, there is a star “WE” found.” At the end of the clip the girl starts to type in a name “Sungha Jung” in the YouTube search and the words and voice finish the intro with “ Like, this boy…”
The screen fades out and we get our first glimpse of the YouTube stage in Seoul. Slowly the sound dims in as the doors to the center stage open and show us, Sungha Jung, acoustic finger-style guitarist who has risen to popularity through his YouTube channel. With over 2,240,000 subscribers as of this past October, Sungha Jung is an appropriate performer to kick off the Seoul side of the YouTube awards.
The 17 year old guitarist sits on a simple couch playing his guitar in a plain white shirt and black pants. He opened the show with his cover of Boa’s “The Milky Way“. As he finished the song he removed his guitar and stepped from the set onto the stage.
He picks up a secondary guitar and starts his second song cover of “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. One of his more popular covers on his YouTube channel, he performs it almost perfectly. He ends his set and we jump to the MC’s for the show.
The boys, 2PM’s Taecyeon and EXO-M’s leader Kris looked dashing in their black suits and Miss A’s Min look positively stunning in the light pink mini dress. As Kris sit’s at the table in the waiting room, we see he is watching Girls Generation’s “I Got A Boy” music video on YouTube. A staff member enters and informs them it’s time to go, the 3 MC’s make their way to the stage.
We jump to the front where the main stage doors open once again and the 3 MCs step out. They each take turns speaking in English and Korean to introduce the awards, welcoming everyone to the beginning of the festival. Seoul is the first stop for this day long event, with Moscow, Rio De Janeiro and London to follow and concluding in New York with the main award show.
The MC’s then take turns to say hello to all the fans watching in multiple languages, showing their diversity in linguistics.
Min attempts to bring up the opening performance, calling Taecyeon, ‘Oppa‘ and causing some laughter at the cute slip up. She then mentions Sungha’s opening performance as well as the next performance by SISTAR.
She mentions that for the first time we will get to see a video teaser of Miss A’s upcoming single “Hush” as well.
SISTAR’s set starts with a short intro dance performed on chairs by the backup dancers. As the dancers leave the stage the curtain rises and we hear the beginning chords of SISTAR’s song, “Give It To Me.” The song is off their second album of the same name, “Give It To Me” and charted multiple times on both music charts and shows.
The girls look fabulous as always. All of them were dressed in sparkling white outfits which was a nice contrast to the sparkling gold curtains of the background on their set.
Next to take the stage was none other than Miss A, including our host for the evening Min. At first, all we can see are the girls’ silhouettes as their intro music plays. As they walk out, they strike pose after pose and begin to show us why they are considered some of the best female dancers in the kpop industry.
They take their first position on the floor, Miss A’s fans already know what song is coming even before the beats of “Goodbye Baby” begin to play. The girls looked extremely sharp in their red and black outfit’s performing the extremely popular song.
Next the girls got to perform their debut song from back in 2010 “Bad Girl, Good Girl“. They continue to perform flawlessly the very catchy song, as they enter their small box set again at the end of the song. they ask the crowd to sing along with them to the chorus.
Next we see are shown a VCR of Super Junior. Though it is only 7 of the boys, Heechul, Kangin, Shindong, Sungmin, Eunhyuk, Donghae and Ryeowook that are present. Eunhyuk leads the group in introductions to their fans worldwide. They talk about the YouTube awards and give the award show a “Fighting” in encouragement.
A VCR of the group Girls Generation is next. All 9 of the girls are present and are their beautiful and cheery selves. The girls talk about the YouTube awards as well and how they are nominated for “Video of the Year,” and to please vote for them.
We continue the show with a trip backstage with Taecyeon who is sat next to none other than the host’s of the extremely popular YouTube channel EatYourKimchi, Simon and Martina.
EatYourKimich is known for their ‘Kpop Music Mondays‘ and their videos on Korean culture and living in Korea from a foreigners stand-point. They are at the show to interview the idols backstage and are definitely another well chose addition to the YouTube awards.
For their first interview they get to speak to Sungha Jung. Prior to the show, Simon and Martina asked their followers to send them any questions they would like to ask the idols.
The first question they had was concerning his next album. He responded that he was learning to write songs and arrange music and was hoping to have 2 new albums next year.
They also asked him about who he would like to collaborate with, seeing he had already done a collaboration with girl group 2NE1.
He responded that since becoming so popular he had been presented with many great opportunities. In fact later in the show he was going to be performing with Sistar’s Hyorin.
We then went to our next performer, Taiwanese singer Show Lo. Some of you may recognize the name from recent news articles as being the singer who’s video that Ga In of Brown Eyed Girls featured in.
Show Lo is also the best selling artist in Taiwan and is known for his dance skills and he definitely proved it on stage today.
He performed his current single “Fantasy“, the same song that Ga In featured in. He was very striking looking in his hot pink jacket and bow tie. He even showed the audience with some Korean phrases when he screamed to the crowd, ” So ri chi da.”
As promised, we are next taken to the stage of Sungha Jung and Hyorin of Sistar. Their stage was simple but very pretty with the background of a star lit night sky with clouds floating across and the 2 of them sat on simple red chairs.
For their duet they covered Canadian R&B singer Melanie Fiona’s song, “Give It To Me Right.” The pairing of these two was a wonderful decision for a performance for the show.
Next on stage was b-boy group, Jinjo Crew, Winners of the Battle of the Year 2010. This crew of b-boy’s have been together since 2001 and are very dedicated to each other. They practice every day and are known for their unique, but mesmerizing dance style. And their performance was certainty that and more.
We are finally back to the MC’s. They talk some more about the New York award show and name some of the performers like, Lady Gaga and Eminem. They remind fans that there is still time to vote and that both PSY and Girls Generation are up for awards.
Taecyeon took a turn at getting a little tongue tied when it came to mentioning PSY’s name. He seemed to be unsure of what title he should use “nim” “ssi” or “sunbae“.
Min then asked the boys what award would they like to see their respective groups win if they were nominated. Taecyeon said “Artist of the Year” because he ‘dreams big’. Kris said he would like to win the same award. Which caused Taecyeon to pretend to get mad. Kris amended his choice and choose “Trend” in the end. Than it was Min’s turn, she gave the boys a laugh when she said she’d like to see Miss A win them all.
Back to the performers again, this time, we are greeted with what looks like a zombie apocalypse. It is actually the intro for girl group 4Minute.
The girls first song was “What’s Your Name” one of their latest singles off the album ‘Name Is 4Minute’. The girls performed wonderfully on their industrial looking set, completely ignoring the zombies walking around.
After a short zombie dance break the girls finished up “What’s Your Name” and than moved on to the next one. The girls got to perform their debut song “Hot Issue” from back in 2009.
Backstage, Simon and Martina are interviewing our MC Min and her fellow Miss A members. Martina jokes that she had kidnapped Min off stage and carried her back their herself because Min was so “light and fluffy“.
They again had asked fans for ideas on what questions to ask the girls and had been over whelmed with the response. The first question was in regards to their 2nd studio album which is due to release on November 5th. They wondered if it was possible they could get a sneak peak.
The girls held firm and the most they would give the EatYourKimchi duo was that the concept was going to be “healthy sexy” and that the lyrics went “Hush“.
They also ask the girls about the fact that none of the song’s on this album were written by JYP. And since that was the case were they going to miss the JYP whisper. Min was quick to affirm that in fact she did miss it already.
Following the interview Cube Entertainment, duo Trouble Maker took to the stage to perform their latest single “Now“. Hyuna and Hyunseung burned the stage up with their sexy choreography and fiery chemistry. The simple stage and background of red and blue lights was plenty to compliment their over the top performance.
The final performance of the show has come and it is sure to be spectacular.
SHINee has been chosen to close out the Seoul side of the YouTube Awards and as we pan to their stage we are greeted with 5 large boxes in darkness. You can barely make out that someone is stood in each one.
SHINee’s song “Symptom’s” begins to play and Jonghyun’s box lights up as he sings. The pattern continues for the full song with only the member currently singing having the light on in his box.
Almost at the end of the song they step onto the stage and perform a small portion of the dance for the song. At the end, they step back into the boxes and the stage goes dark.
Red lights start to climb the backdrop and the word “Danger” flashes onto the screen. Then, the picture and name of each of the members of SHINee flash onto the screen.
We see SHINee laid out on white pallets on the ground with people in white bio-hazard suits checking them over. The beat of “Everybody” starts and the men in white leave the stage and SHINee start their final performance.
Onew, is not on stage due to his neck injury that happened recently, but instead is sitting in a white chair behind his group mates.
Almost at the end of the song the 4 boys performing on stage move to the middle one where the doors open and Onew walk’s out to join them for the last part of the song. As the song ends and the boys drop to the floor, the lights fade.
This ends the Seoul stop on the first ever YouTube Award show train. Overall the show was wonderful to watch. It was well produced and directed.
Let’s hope that we will get to see a similar stage again next year.
Article by: Angelspatience
Edited by: Alona
Screenshots by: Jae Sama
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