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Wanna One will re-form for an appearance at the MAMA show, the biggest annual K-pop awards event.
K-PopNews

K-pop’s MAMA 2021 show: Ed Sheeran guesting, Lee Hyori presenting, the reappearance of Wanna One, and plans for an awards event in US

  • K-pop’s biggest annual awards show has been revamped and has big ambitions, including plans for a US event
  • UK musician Ed Sheeran, who collaborated with BTS, will make an appearance at the awards show, and Wanna One are re-forming for the event
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Tamar Hermanin United States
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The Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMAs) are revamping in 2021, organisers of the annual South Korea-based award show announced.

The 2021 MAMAS, which are hosted by South Korean media conglomerate CJ ENM and aired on Mnet, will be broadcast globally on December 11, at 5PM in Hong Kong. Singer Lee Hyori will host the event.
Along with many of the biggest names of K-pop set to perform, Ed Sheeran will be a special guest thanks to the success of his hit song Bad Habits, which is especially popular in South Korea, and his co-writing on BTS’ hit Permission to Dance.
The boy band Wanna One will also be performing. They disbanded in 2018 after Mnet’s highly contentious Produce 101 series was proved to have rigged the final line-ups of several K-pop teams that came out of it, including Wanna One.
Wanna One will return to the MNET Asian Music Awards for the 2021 edition. Photo: AP
Contestants from the popular Street Woman Fighter dance show will also appear.

This year’s MAMA event will take the award show in a new direction as Mnet aims to solidify its claim the show is “the World’s No 1 K-pop music awards ceremony”.

In the future, MAMA is expected to become a worldwide event, rather than a regional one. While this year’s MAMAs are set to be held in Seoul, and the show has previously been held in different cities across Asia, Mnet also aims to hold the event in the United States in years to come.

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The award show has also revamped its metrics for awards, switching to incorporating professional and industry judging for its primary awards, moving away from a predominantly fan vote-driven and metric-based award show.

While music sales and streams will still be taken into account, and fan voting will determine some categories, 2021 sees MAMA shifting towards an expert panel: three of the top awards will be determined based on metrics and the votes of industry experts invited to participate: artist of the year, song of the year, and album of the year. (This writer was invited to be one such judge.)

Major awards such as worldwide icon of the year and worldwide fans’ choice top 10 awards will be completely determined by fan votes.

Lee Hyori will be presenting the awards show. Photo: @leehyori.leehyolee/Instagram

The shift towards panel judging is seemingly an attempt at more transparency and artistic validation, and follows a history of Mnet shows being accused of disregarding the preferences of fan voters.

Beyond the competition show, voting issues with the Produce series, which resulted in several Mnet executives and producers facing prison, the MAMAs have also faced issues with voting, including a prominent case in 2017 when allegedly fraudulent votes created by automated bots were dismissed despite fan protest.

This year’s judging will reportedly be overseen by financial firm Samil PwC, the Korean branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which validates major award ceremonies such as the Oscars and Grammys.

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