Belated VMA review

I'm sure everybody who gets 'old' has the same thought at some point. "Am I turning into a bitter old crank who hates everything, or is everything just getting progressively worse?". Luckily, just when I start to think I'm turning into a sour old coot, MTV puts on the Video Music Awards and gives me a heaping helping of headache inducing sugary pop crap to make me realize that what is popular now is complete and utter garbage. Gone from the screens of Mtv are any attempt to be clever, any attempt at humor and certainly any attempt to be subversive or interesting in any way. What you're left with is a loud musical version of a political convention. Tell people exactly what they want to hear, trot out a few of the day's most popular 'musicians' and make it all so loud and choreographed that people won't have 2 seconds to think to themselves, "My god, this sucks".

Remember when the VMAs were the 'anti-Grammys'? When you could count on at least one thing to talk about at the water cooler the next day? When you felt like you really should watch because they might show something disgusting like Michael Jackson making out with Lisa Marie Presley? Well those days are as dead as Richie Valens. In fact, I would think that the Grammys will be hard pressed to put on a more industry-friendly 'suck your own cock' festival than this was. Mtv seems to have learned from the incident with the Rage Against the Machine guy crawling on their set a few years ago that encouraging any kind of 'rebellion' is not what the music industry is about, and it just cuts into Fred Durst's speaking time.

A good example of just how low Mtv has sunk is the 'Mtv2' award. Basically a public admission that the real VMA just goes to highest bidder, the coveted 'indie' status of the 2 award was once a possible reason to watch. If you sift through 3 hours of Usher and Chritina Aguilera telling each other how great they look, you could at least know that one award might go to someone who deserves it. Previous winners included videos by Spike Jonez, Michel Gondry etc. You know, people that aren't on complete and total autopilot (although I have to admit, that Usher video is incredible! Who came up with the idea to show him dancing on an expensively lit set? Really groundbreaking stuff).

Ok, so who's up for the semi-coveted Mtv2 award this year? Elephant Man (dumb rap video, but he's Jamaican or something so it's cutting edge), Franz Ferdinand (good song, dull video), Modest Mouse (decent song and video, but really overplayed at this point), Kanye West (What? He's also nominated for every other award!), The Yeah yeah yeahs (boring video, and I'm sick of the song), and finally, Yellowcard (a carbon copy of Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and a hundred other bands that I HATE. Not one unique or interesting thing could be said about them). And who wins? Why Yellowcard of course. What better way to show that this award is now up for sale to the highest bidder from the 'Avril Lavigne, look at me I'm a marketable punk' wing of the music industry?

So anyway, as for the rest of the show, it gave me a splitting headache. Nothing but bright flashing lights, vacant cheerleaders and talentless, christian mousekateers hoping to god that no one realizes how awful their existence is. Oh, and 'kudos' to the audience for booing the Kerry daughters, especially since I know that no one in attendance that night could talk about politics for more than 3 seconds before collapsing to the floor and sucking their thumb. I'm sure the prevailing attitude was, "I don't know which side they're on, but we'd better boo just in case. After all, we don't want to make it look like young people don't care about politics".

Proof if any was needed that nothing good EVER comes out of Florida...