Last night I decided to subject myself to 3 hours of this year’s Billboard Awards ceremony.
Despite already knowing that Taylor Swift walked away with 8 awards, I thought I’d give it a go.
Its lasting effects of me? Somewhat double-edged. Never have I ever watched a piece of programming so horrific, programming that was intended to be nothing but entertaining.
But please, allow me to explain why.
Bruno Mars and his band open the show with an up-tempo number and we seem to be off to a good start. Nicki Minaj wins an award for best Rap Artist, a category in which Psy (??) was nominated, and we’re treated to two appalling performances by Selena Gomez (a Bollywood by way of Hollywood fiasco) and Chris Brown (a tasteless channelling of Michael Jackson’s glory years).
Then out steps Kid Rock to present Best Rap Song. “Let’s give it up for people lip-synching under pre-recorded music,” he comments sardonically, before dropping his mic to the floor. A million times yes. Finally, someone has the balls to speak up and out against the excuse for entertainment that Billboard’s performing artists have subjected us to tonight. No doubt fuelled by whatever was in that coffee cup that he was holding, but that’s not the issue here…
In all seriousness, is it really that hard to sing and dance at the same time? No time to address the question though, we have to get back to the crucification of another pop classic.
Out come Mr Worldwide and Xtina to perform “Feel This Moment”. God knows how they managed to rope in Morten Harket (A-ha’s lead singer) who cameo-ed for 20 seconds and, naturally, stole the performance. Why? Because after 30 years his 5 octave vocal range and “greatest falsetto in the history of pop music ever” is still pretty flawless. Note: no lip-syncing required.
And for all the bitching I do about Taylor Swift, at least she bothered to put on an entertaining performance AND actually sing her song. Oh and Ed Sheeran… funny how one man and his acoustic guitar can put on the best performance of the night. Simple, classy and near-faultless.
But then something extraordinarily strange happened. While Justin Bieber was making his disgustingly self-gratuitous acceptance speech for the first-ever Milestone Award, people started booing him. Now it’s an awful thing for any artist to get booed like that, I don’t condone that kind of tasteless behaviour, but why boo The Biebs? Why not boo during the performances of the artists who think you’re stupid enough to be fed substandard sets?
Although for the record, The Biebs does lack a large degree of humility: “And basically from my heart I really just want to say it should really be about the music… the craft. This is not a gimmick, I’m an artist and I should be taken seriously and all this other bull should not be spoken of.” Even when The Biebs is trying to be humble, he screws it up. Thank your mother, thank god, thank your fans… and then get the hell off the stage. Don’t preach to us about how you’re 19 and you think you’re doing pretty well for yourself.
And then a 54-year-old Prince comes out, backed by an all-female band, and puts everyone to shame with his stellar performance that you can watch below.
At the end of the day it’s Dave Grohl that sums things up the best saying, “When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice, then they think, ‘Oh, OK, that’s how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight fucking hours with 800 people at a convention centre and… then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it’s not fucking good enough.’ Can you imagine? It’s destroying the next generation of musicians! Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy and old fucking drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll fucking start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some shitty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world. That can happen again! You don’t need a fucking computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol.”
I blame the cult culture of celebrity. The question now is how worse do things need to get before they get better?
