Korea Grand Music Awards 2025: Day 2

- November 20, 2025

As with Day 1, I'm just going to let you get right into the performances, and then the winners, without too much input from me at the start. You can get all of that at the end after you watch all the things as we both know that my thoughts are not what you're here for originally. They're just a bonus. Hence why they're at the end.

performances

AHOF (We Ready (AHOF Ver.) + Pinocchio)

BTOB (Wind and Wish + Only one for me + Missing You + LOVE TODAY)

Close Your Eyes (X + SOB (KGMA Ver.))

Dayoung (WJSN) (body)

fromis_9 (Supersonic + LIKE YOU BETTER (KGMA 2025 Ver.)

Hearts2Hearts (FOCUS)

IDID (CHAN-RAN)

IVE (XOXZ + GOTCHA (Baddest Eros) + REBEL HEART)

Jang Minho (Lonely Love + Play the music)

KickFlip (Band-Aid + My First Love Song)

Kiss of Life (k bye + Lucky (Korean Ver.))

Lucy (Where's Your Love + Flowering)

NEXZ (I'm Him + Beat-Boxer)

P1Harmony (DUH!)

Stray Kids (S-Class + In My Head + CEREMONY)

Suho (EXO) (Light The Fire + Who Are You)

UNIS (SWICY)

covers

AHOF (BANG BANG BANG)

KickFlip (Maniac)

winners

2025 Grand Record (Daesang): Stray Kids

2025 Grand Song (Daesang): IVE

2025 Grand Honor's Choice (Daesang): Stray Kids

Best Music 10: aespa, Enhypen, fromis_9, IVE, Kiss of Life, Mark, P1Harmony, Seventeen, Stray Kids, Suho

Best Band: Lucy

Best Adult Contemporary: Jang Minho

Best Vocal: BTOB

Best Solo Artist: Suho, Dayoung

Best Virtual Artist: PLAVE

Best Streaming Song: aespa - Whiplash

Best Selling Album: Stray Kids - KARMA

Best Global K-Pop Star: IVE

Best Trot Stage: Jang Minho

Best Listeners Pick: UNIS

IS Rising Star: IDID, KickFlip, Hearts2Hearts

IS Rookie: AHOF, Close Your Eyes

final thoughts

In case you're coming here before seeing Day 1, the links up in the performances section go to my reviews of the songs because those have the full song contained within them, as well as my thoughts on them. A 1+1, if you will. If a song doesn't have a review and you'd like to see one from me, toss it into The Form! There is an option for a regular review in there, or you can leave a comment. I just have The Form so you can have more anonymity. There's already an anonymous option on the comments here, but that way, only I can see it. If you want.

Then, to cap off the fun, in the winners section you'll see even more links! Those go to the artist pages where you can find any and all reviews I've done on an artist. You'll notice that this one is pretty scarce. I have made a list of all the pages I have to get through for this, and between Day 1 and Day 2, that's 27 artists I don't already have pages for. Some of them I don't have reviews for yet (hint, hint), but I will get them done in the next couple of weeks, and hopefully that will help me out with some of the other award shows coming up. Although there's another one on the 20th. Wait, is that today?

Okay. Well. Fine.

Anyway, enough yapping! If you're still here, thank you. I hope the rambling is at least semi-entertaining. As before, even if I don't specifically shout out a group or an artist, that doesn't mean I'm not very proud of them. It just means I have minimal time to give you the voice and thoughts you expect if you're down here reading this bit.

Six Daesangs, six different artists over the past two days. Congrats to IVE and Stray Kids on their Daesangs this day! Whoo! And congrats to both Seventeen and fromis_9 for their best 10 wins!

However, as excited as I am about those things, there are two awards that I'm absolutely tickled pink by. First, Best Band. Lucy got some recognition! If you've been here for a second, you'll know that I absolutely love this band and I couldn't be happier for them. Am I a little bit sad that they got this while the maknae is in the military? Yes. But regardless, I'm delighted that they got the win at all.

Second award, Best Vocal. Y'all, that is my emotional support group right there! BTOB of the fabulous vocals! Fabulous vocals and the comedic whatever-is-going-on-with-them. No, I'm not kidding. Check out their red carpet. Also, I just realized that the first pose they did spelled out KGMA. Which, they said, but apparently the first time I watched it, the Korean hadn't loaded in my brain correctly. Anyway, sorry, got distracted. There are many groups that have gorgeous vocals, but with the exception of Jang Minho, these guys have the earliest debut here. You expect the vocal quality to be quite high with that level of experience. The fact that other experienced idols dont know if they're a ballad group or a comedy group is just the icing on the cake.

And funnily enough, Jang Minho has been around longer than almost all of the artists who won an award here. He debuted with his group in 1997, which instantly makes me curious about him, so I'm grateful for these awards and the opportunity to discover his existence.

Again, big congrats to all the winners! Yay for them!

Okay, performance time! The bread and butter of the award shows! Every time I think about end of year award shows and those performances, I'm reminded of what Minhyuk said during Kingdom. Roughly paraphrased, the end of the year award shows is when the groups really get to show off in a way that they're unable to do most of the rest of the time.

Coming up first with their five awards, I have to talk about Stray Kids. At the risk of using the word first too many times in a paragraph, I'm kind of stoked about the fact that this was the first award show performance for In My Head, which is almost the middle song of the album (the middle song is the next one, which is called "Half Time", and I'm in love with that as a concept). And here it got to be the middle song as well. The members were in fine form for S-Class and Ceremony both, and oh, my goodness. The flirting to the crowd? The costuming? Wow. And I kind of love that they were proving they were singing live with the occasional not singing into the mic. Well done. Not that they needed to prove that they deserved their two (2) Daesangs, but they did. Oh, and a special shout out to the Lee Know kiss to Changbin.

And this is likely to be the biggest paragraph I write for either day, because it's enough to bring a tear to the eye. And it did. It sent the other idols into tears, especially Kiss of Life's Belle, who looks like she may have been openly weeping while she and just about everyone around her were singing Missing You. I'm just going to fangirl for a second here, prove the name of this blog. These are the healers. So, starting off with Wind and Wish being sung by Peniel, resident rapper who is so resistant to singing even though he's got a nice voice. And you know how we know those are live mics? Because you can hear his little gasp inhales during that first bit. I'm so proud of him. Also, the Mayfly love is still real, you guys. The smartest thing the organizers did was put Stray Kids near BTOB during the performance, because the two groups just flow so well. And getting the close up on them singing and vibing along to Only One For Me while Minhyuk sings? I love them. I love that friendship. And it's kind of hard to believe that that's the man who keeps taking off his shirts for Waterbomb because the duality is real. And just listen to Hyunsik and Eunkwang. I mean, that part of Missing You has some absolutely incredible harmonies, which is something I adore almost more than life itself, which we should all know by this point. Two vocalists and two rappers taking on the parts of seven. Just. And they added a little bit of humor into that, especially Eunkwang because he was just playing with his kids. Bothering Hyunsik, confusing Peniel. What else is a leader supposed to do when he's up here serving high notes and ad-libs like it's nothing? I would sell my non-existent firstborn child for the chance to hear them life. This is a joke. But the sentiment is real. I desperately want to hear them live, and I won't even wear my earplugs for them. Like, top group I want to see is NU'EST (for I hope obvious reasons). Third is SHINee. But second and would-be first is BTOB. I hope this video helps you understand why. If you don't already love them of course. If you already love them, then you are in such good company right now.

Oh, look. That was a really long ramble about how amazing BTOB is. I'd apologize but...they're amazing?

Anywho, on to the others. Namely, Lucy because I love them as well. And you know what? I love the teeny tiny mic on the violin. I love that they have a violinist in the band and he was bouncing all over.. (Also, I still need to get to that first song in the reviews). I'm still sad that they're missing their drummer maknae, but he'll be back next year about the same time as JR. A little bit earlier. And I'm fully convinced that our lead vocalist over here has one of the best vibratos in the game. But you want to know the coolest thing? I talk about my cats liking specific kinds of music a lot. My feral demon child (joke...mostly, he did start out as a feral and now he's asleep on the blanket) loves the ballads and BTOB (specifically Changsub). The house plant that's allergic to tap water (joke) likes the hard rap and Stray Kids and BTS (specifically J-Hope). So, they've clearly got taste. But I rarely talk about my dog because he hates almost everything I enjoy. Music, horror, the occasional romcom, laughing. But when I was listening to Lucy's performance, his ears kept twitching toward my laptop. So, have I finally found something that my dog enjoys? I'm not sure what part specifically he likes, but there's something and I will figure it out. Also, Flowering was their debut song and the violin goes so hard. The belting goes hard. I'm a tiny bit in love. I'm so glad that they won Best Band here.

My girls, fromis_9. Even if they're down to five now. They had a couple of weird mic moments, which I actually like, because it clearly affected their voices and I like the live mic proof. And as much as I love Supersonic (and I do because that choreography is great), Like You Better was made for a big performance like this. They were showing off those vocals and they're just so pretty. Like, I really try not to say too much about appearances, but their voices are gorgeous. They're gorgeous. They're amazingly talented. No, I just really loved this performance, especially Like You Better.

Like, I obviously have a lot of groups that I really like that performed this day. And I really liked almost all of the performances. But I need to give a special shout-out to KickFlip because they did such a good job of using the 360 stage. I'm so proud of the rookies. Well Done.

Well, that's Day 2 covered. I hope you enjoyed the performances half as much as I did, because that means you'll have enjoyed them immensely. If there's anything else that you want my thoughts on, do let me know. Awards? Performances? A review for any of these songs that you want me to cover?

Thanks for your time and for reading! You're the best!

Day 1

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