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.
Last night at the Video Music Awards, American Idol winner Jordin Sparks veered from the script to defend herself against the incessant mocking of the Jonas Brothers’ vows of chastity by host Russell Brand. “I just have one thing to say about promise rings. It’s not bad to wear a promise ring, because not everybody–guy or girl–wants to be a slut,” she said as an amused John Legend looked on. Sparks is a promise ring wearer herself; she chatted up her no-sex stance in the weeks after winning Idol, and she toiled in the Christian-pop scene before singing in front of Randy, Paula, Simon, and America. But is her dissent, and the somewhat positive reaction it’s been getting in the VMA afterglow, a harbinger of a less sexed-up world of pop music? And was it only a matter of time?
Oh HI! It’s dickdogfood. I welcome you to Idolator’s liveblog of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Now before I became a quasi-anonymous commentator legend, I was known as Michael Daddino. (I still am, in certain obscure circles.) Once, during that long-gone era, I watched 24 hours of MTV and wrote about it on the internet in real-time; thus the concept of the liveblog was forged in the smithy of my soul. And today I return to my old stomping grounds, all Proverbs 26:11-style, to point and laugh at…well, what’s it going to be today, kiddies? What’s it gonna be? Contrite Britney? Egotasmic Kanye? The JoBros making their inevitable Fleet Foxes move? Nickleodeon crossovers? Candidate cameos? Overrehearsed spontaneity? Underwhelming medleys? Regrettable covers? A smidge of actual entertainment? Yes, we are likely to get them all: the stars will it so. The handwringing and the laughter begin after the jump.
Sure, in the long run, “which artists had to take moonmen home from tonight’s Video Music Awards ceremony” is probably a meaningless statistic on the level of, say, “almost-no-hitters in Mets history,” but admit it, you want to know if Paramore beat out Fall Out Boy or if both of them got robbed by Linkin Park I MEAN COME ON YOU GUYS–uh, I mean, full list of winners after the jump.
Since MTV’s Video Music Awards-related Twitter feed has lain dormant for the past seven months, I’ve decided to pick up the slack–and get you all ready for our liveblog, which starts at 8 p.m. ET– by updating Idolator’s account on the microblogging service with notes from the red carpet. More »
We have about 52ish hours until Britney Spears trades on her recent notoriety to open the 25th-anniversary installment of MTV’s Video Music Awards, and like last year, you are all invited to watch with Idolator as we break down the goings-on–and, maybe, break down–in real time. So do come back at 8 p.m. ET for the pregame show and the live broadcast, which starts at 9! Sadly, I will not be handling live-blogging duties as a) I was only given a red-carpet pass, and not access to watch the broadcast being simulcast; and b) even if I did high-tail it back to my hotel room really really fast, the damn thing doesn’t air on the West Coast until 9 p.m. PT. But I’ve handed over the task to someone who’s more than capable: Our own Dickdogfood, who pioneered the art of the MTV liveblog all the way back in 2001, which is like forever ago in Internet time.
