I took a lot of flak four years ago for dismissing the VMAs and damning the music industry as follows:
Lady Gaga literally personifies the triumph of packaged and formulaic acts over talented performances. Which is rather a shame because this girl can sing…
Come to think of it, though, most performers today seem to think that the key to success is looking and behaving in a way off stage that makes what they do on stage seem almost irrelevant: Exhibit B – Nicki Minaj (or, for you older folks, think of all of the off-stage exhibitionism that rendered the music of artists like Grace Jones and Madonna irrelevant).
By sterling contrast, Adele not only sings like an angel, but 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.
(“2011 MTV Music Video Awards,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 30, 2011)
This flak came mostly from sophomoric adults who derive their self-esteem from catfish postings on Facebook and photoshopped images on Instagram; or from purported music fans who are more interested in pop stars who can brand themselves like Kim than sing their songs like Adele.
Therefore, it speaks volumes that even the sophomoric, gossip website TMZ dismissed this year’s VMAs as follows:
If you missed the 2015 VMAs last night, you missed dumb people doing dumb things while wearing dumb outfits and talking about dumb stuff.
(August 31, 2015)
But the respected news website Salon truly vindicated me. For it dismissed the whole zeitgeist, in which music videos are more about going viral on social media than providing visuals to enhance the enjoyment of good music. Here is an excerpt, which appeared under this mouthful of a headline: “The insipid hell of the VMAs: Why pop culture’s obsession with ‘Big Moments’ is cynical, stupid & deeply boring. What are we doing still watching this thing?”
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In a world where teenagers become mega-famous on Vine without so much as piercing the broader consciousness, the knowledge that the VMAs are still there is almost comforting. Websites hungry for easily consumed bits of content know that they will be able to dine out for days on the slideshows, gif lists and thinkpieces (guilty as charged!) any big thing seems to generate these days.
The downside of all of this is that everything gets ground up into the same, ultra-cynical feedback loop.
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Frankly, you know pop music has become little more than self-indulgent performance art when even vaudevillian queen Grace Jones begins complaining. After all, Grace pioneered the triumph of performance art (on and off stage) over song and dance. Yet, in the September 10 edition of the Daily Mail – she dismissed pop stars like Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Nicki Minaj as being so bereft of talent, they’re just giving audiences crude versions of the sexualized schtick she performed decades ago (and is still pulling off remarkably well today … at 67).
With that, I drop the mic on pop music.
NOTE: MTV aired the VMAs on August 30. I’m only just getting to this commentary because I was on holiday then, and had other far more interesting things to write about since returning on September 6. Did you watch? Will you continue watching?
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