The group ILLIT (ILLIT) proved their mainstream popularity by taking home a trophy at a major year-end awards ceremony.
ILLIT (Yoon-a, Minju, Moca, Won-hee, Iroha) won the best performance institutional sector in the women's category at the 2025 Melon Music Awards (The 17th Melon Music Awards, hereinafter '2025 MMA') held on the 20th at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul.
ILLIT said, "We are happy to be able to receive such a wonderful award. We want to sincerely thank the many people who helped us receive this award," adding, "We are also really grateful to GLLIT (Gllit, the fandom name), who always support us. We will continue to work hard, so please look forward to it."
That day ILLIT opened the performance with the title track of mini album 3, 'Borrowed Cat (Do the Dance),' which has been loved as a fixture on music charts. Using ribbons and liability to present a magical girl–style intro performance, they raised the festive atmosphere further with a charismatic large-scale group dance and a grandly arranged remix stage.
In the following dance break, ILLIT's unexpected charm shone. With a haughty performance reminiscent of a runway show, they left a strong impression and instantly overwhelmed the atmosphere. When the intro to 'NOT CUTE ANYMORE' played, the venue filled with cheers, and the members captivated the audience by perfectly executing sophisticated choreography with cool expressions to restrained sound.
Meanwhile, the trend-filled 'NOT CUTE ANYMORE' is enjoying long-term success as a popular short-form insert song. The song not only reached No. 1 on YouTube Korea's "Daily Shorts Popular Songs" chart (Dec. 18) but also ranked high on YouTube charts in several countries including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany.
Also, the 'Sped up' version of the song rose to No. 2 on TikTok's "Viral 50" chart (Dec. 19), and the 'Holiday Party ver.' entered Instagram's "Reels rising popular videos" upon its release on the 19th, showing global interest in 'NOT CUTE ANYMORE.'
ILLIT will continue year-end stages across Korea and Japan. They will appear on the 25th at '2025 SBS Gayo Daejeon,' on the 29th on NTV's 'Yearly Music Awards,' and on the 30th at TBS's 'The 67th Japan Record Awards: Shining!'. On the 31st they will close out the year with performances at '2025 MBC Gayo Daejejeon' and NHK's 'The 76th Kōhaku Uta Gassen.'
[OSEN]