This month, Coke Studio Pakistan’s “Pasoori” became the first Pakistan-made music video to cross one billion YouTube views. The Ali Sethi–Shae Gill duet from Season 14 (2022) has racked up around 405 million Spotify streams, topped Spotify’s Viral 50 chart globally and in India, became the first Pakistani song to enter Spotify’s global charts, and even soundtracked Disney’s Ms. Marvel. More than 90 percent of its YouTube views came from outside Pakistan, across more than 60 countries. By any measure, it is one of the biggest songs of the streaming era.
And yet, at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday night, South Asian music was nowhere to be found. The closest the region got: Zayn — the British-Pakistani star — nominated for Best Visual Effects for “Eyes Closed” with BLACKPINK’s JISOO (he lost to Ariana Grande), and KATSEYE, the global girl group featuring Indian-descent member Lara Raj, picking up four nominations across Best Group, Best K-Pop, Best Choreography and Song of Summer without a single win. No South Asian performer took the main stage.
The contrast is hard to ignore. The VMAs created a Best K-Pop category to reflect a genre’s global dominance — and this year BTS swept Best Group, Best K-Pop and Song of the Year for “Swim.” Desi music now has the numbers to make a similar case: “Pasoori” alone out-streams many VMA winners, and Coke Studio Pakistan has spent fifteen seasons and nearly 350 releases building a global audience. Defenders of the status quo will note the VMAs are fundamentally a US-industry show — nominations follow American label machinery, radio and chart presence, not YouTube tallies from Lahore and Delhi.
But that defense is wearing thin. If a song can be watched a billion times in 60 countries and still not register on the VMAs’ radar, the question isn’t whether South Asian music is big enough — it’s whether the awards are built to see it. Until the VMAs create room the way they did for K-pop, the region’s biggest moments will keep happening everywhere except the Peacock Theater.
About the Author
