G-Dragon offered a rare, unfiltered look behind the scenes of the 2025 MAMA Awards, posting a set of candid photos days after the show.
The Big Bang frontman, widely recognized as one of K-pop’s most influential performers, uploaded shirtless and bare-faced selfies taken inside a backstage restroom. His posts came as his performance at the event was drawing heavy online scrutiny.
He posted several selfies taken in a restroom, appearing shirtless and without any stage makeup. The images showed stubble and a noticeably relaxed look, contrasting sharply with the highly stylized image he typically presents in televised performances. He also displayed the four awards he received that night and revealed a new hairstyle made with extensions.
The performance itself, staged on Nov. 29 at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Stadium, quickly drew attention after viewers pointed to uneven vocals and missed high notes.
Much of the set leaned on AR vocal tracks, a practice common in large K-pop award shows but still frequently debated among international fans.
Discussion intensified when G-Dragon left a thumbs-down emoji under the show’s official upload of his own performance, which many took as an acknowledgment that the stage had not gone as planned.
His agency later explained that the issues were tied to an abrupt overhaul of the performance. News of a deadly apartment fire in Hong Kong broke shortly before the event, prompting G-Dragon to abandon his original staging and rewrite the setlist on the spot.
The change forced him to perform with a structure that had not been rehearsed under full production conditions.
Some attendees also said the sound inside the stadium was noticeably clearer than what aired, suggesting that broadcast mixing problems may have contributed to the negative reaction.
The combination of last-minute changes, broadcast audio inconsistencies, and the artist’s own public reaction fueled the controversy, even as the backstage images gained traction among international fans interested in the off-stage moments of one of K-pop’s most recognizable figures.
