Jennie Dominates K-Pop Categories at 23rd Korean Music Awards, Setting New Milestones with “Ruby” and “like JENNIE”

The 23rd Korean Music Awards were held in Seoul on February 26, with BLACKPINK’s Jennie claiming major awards in the K-Pop category. The Korean Music Awards are known to honor purely musical achievements, evaluating artists based on artistic value rather than commercial success or album sales figures.

Jennie received nominations in three top awards equivalent to Grammy Awards—Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Musician of the Year—at this ceremony but failed to win any of them. However, she achieved outstanding results in the K-Pop genre. With her album “Ruby” and song “like JENNIE,” she won both the K-Pop Album Award and K-Pop Song Award, becoming the first soloist to claim these two categories simultaneously.

In doing so, Jennie surpassed her fellow K-Pop artists who were also nominated in the same categories. Mark from NCT, Chaeyoung from TWICE, Hearts2Hearts, NMIXX, LE SSERAFIM, and ALLDAY PROJECT were all nominated for these awards. This indicates that Jennie’s musical maturity and creativity were highly regarded among her peers.

Meanwhile, music critic Kim Young-dae published a music essay titled “The Songwriters” in November 2025, featuring 117 Korean ballads and highlighting the artistic value of Korean music. Having studied musicology at Washington University, Kim Young-dae has contributed to popular discourse on K-Pop through his personal YouTube channel “Kim Young-dae’s School of Music” as well as numerous radio and television programs.

“The Songwriters” is 368 pages long. Part 1 introduces and defines the emotion of ballads, while Part 2 emotionally presents songs using hashtags that reflect the sentiment of Korean ballads such as “Little by Little,” “Never Again,” “One Step Back,” “That Girl,” and “Hope for Reunion.” Part 3 expands the world of ballads through various types of songs. Kim Young-dae identified the emergence of the duo Lee Moon-se and Lee Young-hoon in 1985 as the beginning of Korean-style ballads, defining ballads as “music that unfolds through the power of storytelling” and “popular music that carries our stories.”

Jennie’s victory at the Korean Music Awards and Kim Young-dae’s publication of his work demonstrate an increasing effort to reevaluate the artistic value of Korean music.