I really do enjoy Taylor Swift. “You Belong With Me” is a lovely little pop song; the lyrics on “Fifteen” crystallize adolescent heartbreak in a potent yet understated way. But oh, her voice is so not made for the rigors of The Big Number In The Musical, as evidenced by this latest West Side Story-themed ad for the rapidly approaching Video Music Awards. Her voice… it’s just… well, let’s just say that she probably should stick with the more delicate songs out there; going for the big brassy ones results in everything coming apart, like a particularly weak store-brand aluminum foil. Clip after the jump. More »
The just-released ad for the Video Music Awards placed after the jump, featuring Cobra Starship and Gossip Girl starlet Leighton Meester, will apparently be the “first of many West Side Story-inspired VMA promos,” according to the clip’s caption. Is it super-condescending to ask how many members of the MTV target demo have even heard of the Laurents/Bernstein/Sondheim musical about inter-gang and racial tensions? Probably. But that doesn’t make the decision to theme this year’s Video Music Awards after a 52-year-old musical any less strange. Perhaps there will be a Very Special Episode of Parental Control in order to bridge the generational gap. More »
An article from the still-vaguely-interested-in-music channel MTV’s news arm runs down a few potential sources of “inspiration” for the Video Music Awards performance of kleptomaniacal pop star Lady GaGa, who along with Jay-Z was just announced as a performer on the Sept. 13 broadcast. More »
Perhaps realizing that a good chunk of the people who still care about its brand wouldn’t know a 3OH!3 from a GaGa, MTV has added a new, retro-tastic category to this year’s Video Music Awards: Best Video That Should Have Won A Moonman, in which an overlooked clip from years gone by gets its space-statue due. (I do wonder if the presentation of said award will be shown on VH1, if only because it can then be blown out into an hour-long special about Loving The Videos That Lost At The Video Music Awards or somesuch.) There are 10 clips up for this honor, and they hail from eras as long-ago as MTV’s earliest days and as recent as the YouTube Age. My biases in this category are probably given away by the above screen grab, but you might think* differently! More »
Nominees for the 2009 Video Music Awards, which will be presented on Sunday, Sept. 13 in New York City:
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No, really! Kanye West, who you may remember as the guy who got all upset in 2006 about Justice beating him out for one of MTV Europe’s video-related awards and then freaked out in 2007 when he didn’t win anything at the Vegas edition of the VMAs, only to come back this year to both ceremonies with new singles in tow, apparently went off on a tirade about the integrity of MTV’s various trophy-doling extravaganzas during a UK preview of 808s and Heartbreak earlier this week. The words that will shake your faith in fake awards ceremonies that are set up mainly for the purpose of propping up a lie that music is still important to a culture that thinks Heidi Montag is worth airtime after the jump.
Sure, many people with access to the Internet might agree that this year’s Video Music Awards were among the worst ever. But it looks like whoever is sitting in a cubicle arbitrarily making up television ratings (or, possibly, the scientific data collection method that actually determines these things) disagrees. This year, ratings were up, up, up!
Surely I’m not the only person who thought that the O-Zone-inspired “Live Your Life” was T.I.’s attempt to put one over on the Internet and leak a fake single that pushed the right memetic buttons, and that the recently house-incarcerated rapper would premiere his real new single at the VMAs last… More »
I was sad that Courtney Love didn’t show up to the Video Music Awards’ red carpet as promised, because I would have loved to hear her take on some of the “luminaries” in attendance (cough cough, Joe Francis, cough cough). But at least her just-blogged excuse note for the evening makes (relative) sense: “theyre not the “VMAS” and they never will be again – i had ZERO desire to watch let alone go and thats one of my very favourite people ive ever known or had the honour of being friends and fiends with hosting it so i feel horribly rude that my desire not to watch assholes with chastity rings- oh for fucks sake ive had some great conversations but not ONE has ever ended in an Orgasm, y’all need some pussy and some cock and shut the hell up..” Now see, wouldn’t she have proven a great foil to Jordin Sparks? More after the jump!
From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. After the jump, we look at other publications’ reactions to last night’s Video Music Awards, the “meh”-ness of which we are still trying to process.
