Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Much like award shows, I have minimal interest in year-end music show stages unless they are of the special variety, as K-pop is rather unique in that we usually have literally dozens of stages of top artists performing their hit songs already, so another isn’t going to move the needle. Fortunately, the 2022 SBS Gayo Daejeon had a few noteworthy ones that caught my eye.
——
Honestly, this post was mainly necessitated by LE SSERAFIM, as they effectively used this year-end stage to showcase their full array of talents. Their intro starts with Chaewon cutting her hair off, then Yunjin sings opera with “Habanera” from Carmen, and Kazuha comes out and does ballet to it. Then it’s all segues effortlessly into an explosive dance number before they start with “Fearless“.
Unfortunately, the intro only reinforced how much less hype “Fearless” is, but thankfully they also did a cover of SNSD‘s “The Boys“.
My god, that intro two-shot of Yunjin and Kazuha in this look is fucking insane.
——
IVE – KARA’s “Pretty Girl”
Giving KARA more promo is always valid, but I’m disappointed that Wonyoung didn’t shove Yujin out of line for maximum authenticity.
——
ENHYPEN – BTS’s “Dope”
Still just an elite performance song and the production is on the right side of good enough to still make it a fun listen.
——
Most of the other stages either weren’t songs I wanted to see covered, had mid arrangements, weren’t done well, or some mixture of the three.
Anyway, as is tradition (I guess, since they did it last year as well), they concluded with a cover of Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want For Christmas“.
