Winning one of the highest Daesang categories at MMA 2023, NCT DREAM made many people dissatisfied and questioned transparency. MMA 2023 also caused controversy when the incident occurred while NewJeans performed.
On the evening of December 2, the Melon Music Awards – MMA 2023 ceremony officially took place. The owners of the awards are mostly in the audience’s predictions. However, it still could not escape controversy in one of the highest categories – Daesang Record of the Year awarded to NCT DREAM.
If the remaining 3 Daesangs are all based on digital scores, evaluation from the judges and votes, then Record of the Year is 100% decided by the judges. This is an award honoring everything that creates an artist’s success during the year, based on the quality of music, MV, achievements, coordination with the production team…
Looking at what NCT DREAM achieved in 2023, the audience believes that it is true that the boys have successfully promoted their careers. But to receive Daesang is not enough to be outstanding and there are many more excellent names like NewJeans, IVE or Jung Kook BTS – names that balance both domestic and international influence. Especially with a digital-oriented award like MMA, one of those three names has an even greater chance of winning an award for high digital music scores, having hits, even super hits, and being recognized by the nation.
Suspicions about a hidden agreement between Melon and SM Ent were raised by Knet:
“Compared to NewJeans and IVE, what can NCT DREAM do to receive Daesang?”
“At this rate, no one will remember this Daesang and instead, it will go down in history as one of the most meaningless victories.”
“But we also have to admit that the group’s remake of Candy (H.O.T) is really good.”
On the opposing side, the audience said that they could not criticize NCT DREAM because it was clear that Record of the Year’s criteria was 100% experts. The jury must have considered the overall overview and comprehensive basis to decide to award this Daesang to the group.
NewJeans’ performance at MMA 2023 is also controversial. While the group was performing, it was revealed that the members’ music and voices did not match. The MMA side immediately corrected the error due to the delay in the backstage audio. However, this has raised suspicions that NewJeans lip-synced the entire set.
Bringing the entire Get Up album to the MMA 2023 stage, but the group’s arrangement was criticized for being bland and messy. Not to mention, the incident made many netizens upset because they thought the group disrespected the audience by lip-syncing and were disappointed by the girls’ poor skills.
However, fans have released fancams to prove that the group does oversing, which means using backtrack like most idols, to ensure that singing and dancing at the same time is perfect and doesn’t take too much effort. The fancam that was used as evidence was Hanni’s. You could clearly hear the parts where she was out of breath while performing Cool With You. However, many netizens believe that NewJeans should still improve their live singing ability because this is the group’s major weakness.
NewJeans’ performance with perfectly edited sound in the full version has been updated by Melon:
