The Gayo Daejuns 2012: Highlights and Notable Performances

The end of the year is here and we all know what that means in Kpop land. That's right... the Gayo Daejuns! Kpop fans know these shows can either be awesome or tiresome or even a mixture of both. I assure you it was the same this year but there were some performance and special stage gems to squee over sprinkled throughout all the shows. Let's watch and critique shall we?

Be sure to scroll down to the end for links to playlists of the 3 shows!

INFINITE on the SBS red carpet.

I'll start with the KBS Gayo Daejun. First up is SHINee with probably the most talked about performance of the past few days, aka the Taemin Rips His Pants Debacle. I'll first say that, imo, SHINee had some of the best stages of the three shows. They sang live (and sounded good doing it), they danced their asses (and pants) off and they wore some of the best crazy outfits in a crazy-outfit-wearing world.

SHINee Sherlock (Clue + Note)-

To all the people talking crap about their outfits, don't you realize it's SHINee? That's what they do. If they looked "normal" that would be boring and they're definitely not trying to be boring.

The rip heard 'round the world:

You can literally see his crotch make a break for freedom. Poor thing! Key is probably STILL rolling on the floor laughing about that one.

Next up is Sistar's Hyorin and Park Ju Won with Sway-

Umm... Wow! That's all I've got to say. Well... that and she needs to work on her pronunciation. I only knew what she was saying because I've heard that song many times before. However, she sounds incredible. Her vocal range is astounding and the accompaniment of the Spanish guitar was flaw free.

B1A4 Baby Goodnight-

Ok this was too, too cute. Besides some vocal mishaps (mostly CNU's), they did a great job. I'm not even that much of a B1a4 fan and I was totally into it. I'm also a fan of their outfits, ESPECIALLY Jinyoung.  If you're gonna wear fun stuff, go all out.

BEAST It's Not Me + Beautiful Night-

One of the better performances of the night, I just wish they'd stop putting Hyunseung in those nut-hugging girl pants. I'm sure I'm probably in the minority here but I really don't want to see the penis outline on any guy who's that skinny and femme. I'm sorry but that's just me. <Cue BEAST fans going off on me here>

Ailee Heaven + Just Dance-

Another wow for me, at least during "Heaven". She needed to tone it down a little for "Just Dance", but really her voice is excellent.

Next up is SBS:

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SBS Gayo Daejun:

This show seemed mostly to be about a whole bunch of dubstep but I like dubstep when it's done well. Most of these performances = dubstep done mediocre.


Best performance of the night hands down goes to Simon D, Dynamic Duo and Epik High's Cipher-




They killed it. If you're not aware, a cipher is a freestyle rap battle done in a group setting. Of course, we know this performance wasn't done freestyle but still, great job guys. I particularly found Tablo to be amusing as hell in the background and really damned odd, but that's ok... I like my guys to be kind of nerdy/weird.

UPDATED: "Cypher" was recently released and Tablo tweeted a link to dl.  You can download it here.

Of course one of my favorite performances of the night had to be G-Dragon and Big Bang with One of a Kind + Crayon + Fantastic Baby + Gangnam Style-




I love all the leather, the performances were good and I absolutely am enamored with GD's hair.  It just keeps getting better and better each time.  I'm still waiting for the number for GD's hairstylist over here!  Someone get on that.

Best outfits of the night goes to B.A.P's Warrior-

Damn they looked HOT. They need to always look like that... in fact those are the best outfits they wore all year. Phew! They also needed to have made that performance longer. Way too short but I suspect it's because Big Bang had to do 3 songs and you know how that goes.

INFINITE The Chaser Remix with orchestra-

These guys are just too talented. I can't wait to hear and see what they have in store for us in 2013.

SM the Performance Intro + Spectrum-

This was incredible!  The dancing was phenomenal, "Spectrum" was even good and Lay x Kai just laid me out. I have to give props to SM Entertainment; they have some of the best male dancers in Kpop.  They also have one of the best female dancers in Kpop in general in BoA, but I digress.  One question though: Why was Minho there?  He's not a great dancer or a great singer at all. I assume he was just there for looks.

FT Island & CNBLUE Special Stage-

This was a great stage and they looked like they had a lot of fun playing off each other.

Now on to MBC:

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MBC Gayo Daejun:

While many of the MBC performances were fun, most of them didn't stand out to me as exceptional but I did find some that I really enjoyed watching.

SHINee and f(x) Rocketeer + My First Kiss + Moves Like Jagger-

Can I take them home and play with them like dolls? They're like a box of cute.

INFINITE - Without U + 60 Seconds + The Chaser Remix-

These boys were flaw free in all 3 shows but it was really cool to see them perform all these songs together.


Best girl group performance of all 3 Gayo Daejuns was:

KARA with PANDORA Remix-

So much fun how they made it like a club. I usually find the boy groups in the Kpop genre tend to be much stronger in every way than the girls, but KARA is one of the exceptions and this was a great performance.

Teen Top & 100% Sorry Sorry x Crazy Rock Remix-

That was the best Teen Top performance that I've seen in months.


So there you have it.  There were lots of great videos that I left out or you'd be here all day, not that that's a bad thing.

What did you guys think?  Which station put the extra in "extravaganza"?  Would you have picked differently than I did?  Let me know in the comments!

Click the links below for playlists of all the shows:

KBS Gayo Daejun here.
SBS Gayo Daejun here.

MBC Gayo Daejun here.

Source: INFINITEKpopfans, atnng90extrahd, TotoSW0525, BIGBANG, monmonsnowSeason6, KMusicLiveMBC, KMusicLiveSBS, KMusicLiveKBS.