If you are a card-carrying member of Twerkoholics Anonymous, or T(&)A as it is better known, you wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere near the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, New York, a little while back. If Clive Palmer twerking on the Austereo network had you reaching for your copy of the 12 Steps, then Miley doing her thing on the big stage of the MTV Video Music Awards would have had you back in rehab faster than you could say “bulging disc”. Tread wisely as you surf your Foxtel IQ over the next couple of weeks in case you stumble across a repeat.
Now I love a good awards show. I also love the VMAs. Where else can you put your finger on the pulse of American pop music and declare it dead or alive? And ours is not to judge. If the kids say it’s got a good beat and they can dance to it, then I say roll the videotape.
The camera cuts to the crowd. Will Smith in is da house. Wow, these awards are legit.
First up, put your hands together for Last Gaga doing “Applause”. Gaga does songs, rather than sings them, and the crowd adores her right now. The number began with an intense close-up of her framed face, very wide-eyed and presumably bushy-tailed. Is it just me or would you struggle to identify Gaga in a police line-up? I’ve seen her countless times but wouldn’t recognise her in the street (unless she was wearing a dress made out of lamb cutlets). And, come to think of it, I feel the same way about Robin Thicke. Alan Thicke, sure. I mean, “Growing Pains”, c’mon! But ask me to do an identikit picture of Robin and I’m toast. But his double act with Miley. Now that we can all make a drawing of.
As it happens, I was watching a replay on MTV and, bizarrely, given the show trades off this stuff, the replays edited out the highlights – extreme backdoor twerking action, big finger twirling action etc. – but you got the picture good enough. (Sadly, they also cut out whatever Taylor had to whisper about Harry from One Direction which I understand was something along the lines of “Thanks for giving me the storyline for my new concept album”. Taylor is going prog. You heard it here first.)
As for Miley’s performance, I’m saying she was an amalgam of Gene Simmons circa. “Destroyer” and Boris Karloff circa. “Frankenstein”. My understanding is that Universal Pictures has commenced proceedings against Miley to protect their intellectual property associated with the way Boris staggered around as the Monster all those years ago. And the hot tip is they will win. She herked, she jerked and she twerked. It was not dancing as we know it, Jim. But you gotta love the way she gave it to all those Hannah Montana lovers out there. And “Blurred Lines” was the perfect song to do that. I know what rhymes with hug me. Bug me! And she certainly bugged a lot of people. OK, so Cyndi Lauper might have a point that the song is about date rape but Abba wrote a song called “I Kissed The Teacher” and nobody died. Besides, I’m sure Robin would say that he is portraying a character in the song just like Ice-T in “Cop Killer”. So She Bop that, Cyndi!!
The camera cuts to the crowd. Will Smith in is da house. Wow, these awards are legit.
The pace was quickening. There was exciting news when Iggy Azalea co-presented with Lil’ Kim. Kim gave props to Iggy as being an MC from Australia of all places. According to Kim, this means that hip hop has gone worldwide and who am I to argue? Taylor took to the stage, dressed like a starlet from the 40s, to pick up a Moonman from Daft Punk, Pharrell and Nile. She has raced from sweet country, through faux raunchy, all the way to timeless classic so quickly (sigh). Kanye performed almost entirely in silhouette, presumably to hide the bags under his eyes from North’s late night feeds.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis locked up the gong for the Best Video with a Social Message. The producers quite rightly decided to not show clips from the nominated videos as the social messages might have had a distressing effect on the kiddies watching. Macklemore struggled to find the right words to describe his excitement to the crowd and the acceptance speech only picked up when Lewis took over. Role change?
Then the other big event of the night – Justin Timberlake reunited with N-Sync and it was the most powerful 60-90 seconds I’ve seen in a long time. Given that JT did his best MJ impression for around an hour and fifteen minutes, it seemed that the Syncers were a bit skinny in their allocation. No doubt things will be said about this in the US Congress and on “The View”.
The camera cuts to the crowd. Will Smith in is da house. Wow, these awards are legit.
For mine, the highlight of the night was when Jason Collins and A$AP Rocky walked on stage to present. Jason is the NBA player who came out earlier this year. He gave a heartfelt speech about discrimination, whether based on race or sexual orientation, is no longer acceptable. In the segue of the year, A$AP Rocky immediately followed up with a word up to his boy, A$AP Ferg, about Ferg’s new album coming out next week. Classy.
On the home stretch now. Bruno Mars proved that he can sing. Joseph Gordon Levitt spoke in a weird voice that he admitted that even he had no idea why he was doing it. JT won Video Of The Year for “Mirrors”. Kay Perry closed proceedings under the Brooklyn Bridge. I once saw KISS perform there. Maybe Miley and Gene could do a duet sometime.
The camera cuts to the crowd. Will Smith and Lady Gaga in full Aphrodite gear are in da house. Wow, these awards are too legit to quit. See you next year.
-Kris Gale
