In the last ten years, MTV has gone from a cultural icon to to cultural wasteland. Gone is the respect of being a pioneer in the music video industry. A home for music lovers to see their favorite bands latest videos. Now, it is 23 and a half hours of brainless garbage and 30 minutes of music video clips on the ever increasingly tepid TRL. They can't even be bothered to show the entire video anymore. When was it decided that MTV should no longer be about music? I was okay with them having original programing like the Real World or Made. I can understand the need to create more shows to bring in viewers. However, your network is MTV. MUSIC Television. The bulk of MTV programming has little, if anything at all, to do with music.
The MTV Video Music Awards used to be an important night in music. It was always an exciting, relevant program. They recognized artists the grammys generally turned away from. The awards consistently had amazing performances. REAL performances. Artists on stage sharing their craft and blowing the doors of the buildings.
Last night, the latest VMAs aired "live" from Las Vegas. It was a disaster from the gaudy over indulgent preshow(John Norris...what the hell is up with the Makeup? Why are you even still at MTV?), to the schizophrenic main show. During the show Alicia Keys was forced to choke out the words "the most important night in music." Not anymore MTV. You've destroyed any reputation you built up in the first 20 years of your existence. The importance of your awards have shrunk to just barely above the Peoples Choice Awards or the defunct Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.
It used to be that the VMA performances were looked at as an event. Now, when 90% of the performers either can't be bothered or are not permitted to actually SING when they're performing, whats the use? I understand the use of a backing track. That is forgivable in some cases. Chris Browns performance was great from a dancing standpoint but he didn't even bother to maintain the illusion that he was actually singing. If he is trying to take the spot light from Usher, he'll need to start using his pipes while he moves. Granted, I enjoyed his performance, I just wish he'd start to sing more than fall back on the now standard lip-synch.
Last night also marked the "return" of Britney Spears. Again, she showed her respect to her fans by faking her way through yet another performance giving us a sneak peak of what her CD is going to sound like. She lip-synched her way through an amateurish and embarrassing performance. The song is pretty catchy, but she didn't seem to know the words or the dance moves. She was slow and clunky. Maybe she was concentrating more on sucking in her gut than on her actual performance?
Of course, leave it to the phenomenal Alicia Keys to come out and school everyone else on how to blow up an award show. She let loose with a fantastic performance of her new single "No One" and a cover of "Freedom". She was the best performance of the evening.
It just seems that the glory days of the VMAs are gone. We'll never see another iconic event like Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora performing "Wanted Dead or Alive" acoustically. We'll never see another performance like Janet Jackson's "If". There will be no more "Like a Virgins" or Michael Jacksons.
When the biggest story of the evening is 2 has been rockers getting into a fight over a has been playmate, seriously, something is wrong. By the way, Kanye won't be RSVP'ing for next year.
Are the winners news anymore? Does anyone care?
During his acceptance speech for his "Quadruple Threat of the Year" award (which he won for singing, dancing, acting, and clothing line...) Justin Timberlake issued a challenge to MTV. He called them out to play more music videos. Of course, I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that record labels are going to be slashing the budgets on videos.
I fear those days are gone. MTV will never be able to return to its glory days. Worse, it's lost the one thing it struggled to achieve: Relevance.
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