A quick browse of my commentaries on previous MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) will attest to the fact that my review of this annual show is invariably as informed (and I hope as entertaining) as that of any music industry critic.
But watching Kanye and Jay Z perform at this year’s show, I could not help noticing that they not only looked, but even sounded like two warbling geriatrics trying way too hard to be hip – the hop in their steps seeming long a thing of the past.
If hip-hop was not already dead, as rapper Nas proclaimed prematurely in 2006, Kanye and Jay Z sounded its death knell on Sunday night.
More to the point, their performance made me realize that it’s probably time to leave commentary on the VMAs to those who are actually impressed by the increasingly packaged and formulaic acts that pass for entertainment these days.
When Katy Perry, whose performances all look like a slightly naughty Mickey Mouse Club production, wins the video of the year award, and picks up another for a collaboration with Kanye no less, you know the lip-synching vanilla pop that Britney Spears popularized is taking over music industry.
Accordingly I shall limit this, my last VMAs commentary, to just a few points.
Lady Gaga literally personifies the triumph of packaged and formulaic acts over talented performances. Which is rather a shame because this girl can sing.
But given this triumph, it seems perfectly reasonable that, instead of critiquing the way she performed on stage, most critics are hailing the way she spent the entire evening in character as Jo Calderone, her purported male alter ego who looks like a cross between a wannabe Bob Dylan and Danny Zuko (John Travolta in Grease).
Never mind that the only people who could have found Gaga’s “Hey, I’m Jo” ranting entertaining are those who tune in to The Jersey Shore every week to catch Snooki’s latest drunken rant, which, granted, are millions. In any case, this Lady has clearly jumped the shark.
Come to think of it, though, most singers today seem to think the key to success is looking and behaving in ways offstage that render what they do onstage irrelevant: Exhibit B – Nicki Minaj (or, for you older folks, think of all of the offstage exhibitionism that rendered the music of recording artists like Grace Jones and Madonna irrelevant).
By sterling contrast, Adele not only sings like an angel, she might just be the music industry’s saving grace. Unfortunately, the VMAs have so little to do with musical talent these days that Adele performing on this show was rather like Andrea Bocelli performing on So You Think You Can Dance.
Finally, how’s this for irony of ironies:
Kanye nearly killed his career at the 2009 VMAs when he ruined Taylor Swift’s debut as the latest pop sensation by bum-rushing the stage, yanking the mike from her hand and letting the world know that he thought Beyoncé was more deserving of the coveted video of the year award, which Taylor had just won. At the time Beyoncé seemed mortified that Kanye would upstage a fellow performer in such a self-indulgent manner.
I wonder therefore why it did not occur to her that she would be upstaging all of her fellow performers if she chose the VMAs to make a self-indulgent show of being pregnant with her first child. Because that’s exactly what she did – no doubt to the seething chagrin of Katy and Gaga who had just cause to think that their schtick, not Beyoncé’s pregnancy, would be the talk of this year’s VMAs.
Regular readers know how truly fond I am of Beyoncé. But I thought this smacked too much of an imperious PR stunt. Who the hell does she think she is, Kate Middleton?!
Anyway I pray this does not come back to haunt her; i.e., counting her chicken before it’s hatched in this fashion might come home to roost … if you know what I mean.
Related commentaries:
Kanye bum rushes Taylor at VMAs
Beyoncé was hot!