Tonight the 55th GRAMMY Award ceremony will air on TV. Recently I had the chance to watch the 27th Annual Golden Disk Awards which Dramafever described as the Korean Grammy Awards.

I don’t expect much from awards shows any more. Too many years of broken hearts as I watched horrible performers win over great ones. And yet, every year, I still watch them.

After being very entertained by the Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMAs), I was looking forward to the Golden Disks. I gotta say it was a bit of a letdown. After watching the MAMAs, I was replaying several performances particularly ones by Epik High, G-Dragon, Big Bang and Shinee. Their performances were like what you’d see at a concert in an arena. There was a WOW! factor. This show not so much. While I liked the MCs from both nights the performances were just okay. Not awful, just okay.

There were several things I liked about the show. It was nice that they spoke both Korean and English. The Malaysian audience gave off good vibes. Props to the organizers for having such a big event outdoors. I can’t remember seeing an awards show held in an outdoor venue. Nicole of Kara and Jung Yong Hwa of CN Blue were well chosen as MCs.

One of my favorite performances was the pairing of Jong Hyun of the band CN Blue and solo artist Juniel. Although he seemed to over power her while singing, I loved the duet. This is one that I added to a YouTube playlist.

Enjoyable performances

• Jung Yong Hwa’s performance of Payphone. I’ve seen him sing entirely in English before, but it’s still pleasantly surprising.
• G-Dragon, one of a kind indeed.
• CN Blue’s performance—a band that plays instruments live. Nuff said.
• Shinee always seems to bring it for live shows.

Side notes

• What is up with still reading from cue cards instead of teleprompters? I always think of Korea as high-tech, I guess because of Samsung et al, so it just seems odd to me seeing folks going old school.
• Once again I was disappointed in Super Junior’s performance mostly because they sang all the songs I don’t like of theirs.
• Since I also love fashion a big part of awards shows for me is the clothing. It would be nice to see what the red carpet arrival is like for the Golden Disks and the MAMAs.