What will BTS's "special appearance" on the American Music Awards in Vegas look like?

Dear Gossips,

The American Music Awards are happening next Monday 25 May in Las Vegas. I wasn’t planning on watching the show since MC is going to watch and post about the event the following day for this site.

That has now changed, turns out I have to tune in. Because there was an announcement this morning.

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Exciting for ARMY, obviously, but not entirely unexpected considering the timing and location. BTS’s Arirang tour stops in Vegas for four shows this coming Saturday, Sunday, and then Wednesday and Thursday. The band and their label have also confirmed a full city takeover, with activations happening all over the Strip. So that week in Las Vegas already belonged to BTS, the AMAs are basically a visiting sideshow.

Now that we know that RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook will be at the AMAs in person, the question is what the “special appearance” means. They are perfectly capable of putting together a one-off performance for this event, even while on tour. It’s just a matter of whether or not they want to, not an issue of if they can. If it was a performance though, would they have just called it a performance rather than a “special appearance”?

I’m so curious because, well, it’s BTS but also because there is some significance to BTS being at the AMAs. It was at the AMAs in 2017 where they made their first primetime televised US appearance. It was a monumental achievement – they performed “DNA”, an entire song in Korean at the American Music Awards, and their reception was the loudest and most enthusiastic of the night, surprising those in the audience who were unfamiliar with the power of K-pop.

I was watching live, a baby ARMY at the time about a year into my obsession. My husband was mystified back then, until he walked into the room just as their performance started and remained transfixed in place for several minutes and at the end turned to me and said, “Yeah, OK, I get it now”. For those of us who’ve been riding with BTS for all these years, the AMA 2017 performance is a f-cking legend.

And now they’re returning to this event, in a town they turned into their own theme park in 2022 during the Permission to Dance residency, with an estimated $160 million economic impact – during their much-anticipated comeback, what they’re calling the 2.0 era of their careers. “Special appearance” might be an understatement.