BTS and the Danish GAFFA Awards

The South Korean band BTS was nominated for their very first Danish music awards when the readers of GAFFA, Denmark’s only “serious” music magazine, had nominated them in the categories best new international act, best international act and best album at the annual GAFFA Awards show, which takes place here in the city of Odense, Denmark, where I live.

This was a very big deal, because although BTS are international, Grammy-nominated, Billboard Award-winning superstars with several Billboard top hits and sold-out world tours, the Danish press - as probably the only one in the world – has chosen to ignore them. The reason for this is that they sing in Korean and are a labelled a boyband, which in the west means that you mainly cater to children and teenagers, and of course the Danish press can’t be bothered to look for themselves to see that BTS are different. The boyband label, which they got in the west as we are not familiar with Korean idol groups, has been very harmful to BTS in many western countries, but especially in Denmark, where the press refuses to take them seriously. Therefor these GAFFA nominations were extremely important.

Before the GAFFA Awards we were a group of BTS-fans (we are called A.R.M.Y.) who met at a local restaurant to have dinner and fun. Some of us knew each other in advance as we usually meet up for dinner before local BTS-events, others came from our capital Copenhagen and other towns in Denmark. We had a great evening with a lovely buffet, BTS-quizzes with amazing prizes sponsored by the BTS Danish ARMY fanbase and free BTS merchandise from the “All in Kpop” store in Copenhagen.

We then went to the GAFFA Awards show that was held in the music and theatre centre ODEON. It has a capacity of 1,740 seated guests and the place was packed. The show lasted two hours and was livestreamed on YouTube and I think more than one viewer had quite a shock, especially if it was their first meeting with the Danish music scene. Right from the start the audience was confronted with the VERY loud metal band Møl, they saw the amazing duo Ravi Kuma who with the titles “I Only Make Out with Myself” and “Stop Staring at My Dick” was my favourites that night, they met the singer Fallulah who dressed as a bird and only answered with bird-sounds when interviewed, and then of course there was the drinking. Both artists and audience drank heavily during the evening, so the audience got very loud and the artists, especially the group The Minds of 99 who won five awards, came on stage totally stoned, unable to speak in full sentences and spilling beer all over. But it was hilariously funny. Believe me!

All the performing artists were Danish except for the Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, who seemed quite sober, I have to mention, and most of the awards were aimed at Danish artists too. Five awards were international, though, namely international hit song of the year, new international act of the year, best international act of the year, best international soloist of the year and best international album of the year. Ariana Grande won best hit (“thank u, next”) and best soloist whereas best new international act went to Cardi B. BTS had been nominated in this category as well, although it seemed a bit silly as they debuted in 2013! Anyway, the last two categories, best international act and best album went to BTS, the album being their latest “Love Yourself: Answer”.

The Danish A.R.M.Y. was very enthusiastic about the win which the host, journalist Anders Breinholt, was quick to pick up on. Unfortunately, he - along with some of the journalists who later reported about the show - made the classic mistake of presuming that we were teenagers, although our average age that evening must have been 30+!

In any case, the wins are very important to the Danish A.R.M.Y. as now the Danish press can no longer pretend that they have never heard about BTS or that BTS will never make it because they sing in Korean. Now we only need the reporters to realise that the majority of BTS fans aren’t teenagers but grown men and women!

I’ll give the GAFFA Award Show 2019 four out of five stars: ****

BTS winning two GAFFA Awards is worth five stars, though: ***** 💜😁💜

You can watch the entire show on GAFFA’s YouTube channel. Click here.