Archives For vma

It’s been a LONG time since I shared anything here xD… but this sure is memorable. It’s also been a long time since I paid any attention to MTV or the VMAs. I have no idea who was doing what where, but since Missy Elliott just dropped Iconology [YT], there wasn’t a better time to catch up with news.

In a decade of forgettable American/Western mainstream music, and an even more forgettable MTV music era, it’s hard to come up with a magical moment that marked this decade… but this could be IT. It’s not the best in the history of VMAs, but it could be very well the best performance VMA has offered this decade.

Missy was, after all, at the top during the peak MTV performance years. Bless her soul. And bless her love for baby girl Aaliyah.

britney-spears-vma-2000-oops-i-did-it-again

I don’t think anyone needs more than a few words on this [1].

Remember when this was standard?

Except for that 3-year break MTV took off the Breakthrough Music Video category, they had continued giving away the prize — which had been given to the likes of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham — until 2010, when they officially removed the category.

So I ask again, what happened to Breakthrough Music Videos?

As a reminder, I put together a list with all the winners.

[iframe width=”580″ height=”326″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLE88395EDFAA954B7″ /]

If I had been picking winners (from that past post), I chose:

  • 2006 – U2 for Window in the Skies [MV]
  • 2007 – Tom Waits for Come On Up to the House [MV]
  • 2008 – Bjork for Wanderlust [MV]

For the other two years, you know I’m probably partial to SunnyHill [1], but I’ll go with Salyu’s Tadano Tomodachi [1] concept because it’s much more a production concept than a music video concept. For 2012, despite its serious hard-hitting concept [1], I would have to go with Graham Coxon’s What’ll It Take [MV] due to its imaginative execution using fan footage.

So what are some of your favorite music videos?

You know you’re fucking awesome when you lipsync through a whole show and nobody gives a shit, because it’s still awesome. Though, I would argue that MJ should’ve stopped his performance in Dangerous.

Not since Michael Jackson began dazzling the pop music stage has there been any other pop act that has been able to define dancing the way Michael did. To this day and age, when dance pop music (in America) is stale, and Korea gives me pretty choreographed skill [1] — there’s still no one bringing anything new to the pop table.

You’re still missed MJ.

I feel terribly sad that this had to happen this way~

It’s not like I sat through the VMA this year (the very first year that I chose not to, without counting the years I had no access to MTV), but having Jersey Shore introducing me nominees was too much for me to take… in the end, I tuned out and went for dinner.

When I found out that MTV was going to do a Britney Spears tribute, I thought to myself “why?” because, well — for starters, Britney’s not dead. Plus, Britney’s been on the music stage for barely 10 years… and out of those ten years, only five had been actually unquestionably successful.

So it pained me to have to see Britney accepting this because it means it’s just never gonna happen again. No, people. Do not expect Britney ever to recover her former glory, because it ain’t going to happen. But what’s worse is Britney (and her camp) accepting this poorly put together tribute… but who do we blame?

It’s not like the music industry has being able to produce anyone to follow Britney’s footsteps — failing to produce someone who can at least lipsync and kickass dance like Britney used to be able to. So what does MTV do? Get no-name little girls to dance to a speed-up Britney mashup. Each of her tracks gets reduced to a 15sec. blurb in which the girls duplicate Britney’s ‘famous’ moves — it’s just chaos.

And what does MTV do? They make Britney introduce Beyonce.

That just… doesn’t make sense at all.

Britney, you used to deserve so much better. Specially from MTV.