A Quick VMA Recap

 Is it just me, or were the 2020 VMAs pretty boring?

They shouldn't have been. They were held all over New York City due to the social distancing regulations. We had performances in some impressive locations. The Weeknd began the show on a skyscraper in Hudson Yards, and a few of the performers (I think Maluma, Keke Palmer, a few others) were set up in a drive-in theatre kind of thing. Lady Gaga wore a lot of ridiculous outfits, complete with custom masks. (She said "Wear a mask, it's a sign of respect," which I cannot emphasize enough. It doesn't even have to be one of Gaga's extravagant masks! Just a nursing mask will do fine!) But due to most of the awards being prerecorded, the ceremony lacked a lot of the surprises one comes to expect from the Video Music Awards. Think about it; all of the most iconic VMA moments were unexpected and shocking, like Kanye's "Imma let you finish," Miley Cyrus's twerking, Madonna kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Nothing like that happened this year. 

The VMAs this year were dedicated to the late actor Chadwick Boseman, who died just two days before the ceremony. The ceremony was bookended by Keke Palmer's home-recorded, heartfelt tribute to Boseman and Will.i.am saying "Wakanda Forever" at the end of the Black Eyed Peas' performance. While presenting the Best New Artist award, Travis Barker also introduced an “In Memoriam” segment to pay tribute to some of the talented folks we have lost this year, including rappers Juice WRLD and Pop Smoke, Glee star Naya Rivera, and Boseman. I was surprised that they didn't include Kobe Bryant or his daughter, Gianna in there, but it was still a nice tribute. However, ABC was airing Boseman's most famous movie, Black Panther, as well as an ABC News special celebrating his life and educating about colon cancer, the disease he quietly battled for four years. There were many times during the night that I wished I was watching Black Panther instead. (I do have the film recorded and will be honoring Boseman's legacy, along with the impact of the film, on Saturday with a MOVIE TALK on Black Panther.)

The winners of the awards were mostly expected. Lady Gaga took home five awards- "Rain on Me" with Ariana Grande won Song of the Year, Best Collaboration, and Best Cinematography, while Gaga herself won Artist of the Year and the first ever Tricon Award. They hyped up the Tricon thing a lot, which didn't make sense. Ever since the first VMAs, their lifetime achievement award was called the Video Vanguard Award, renamed the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 1991. I'm not sure why they didn't have the award under that name...I guess because of Michael Jackson's complicated legacy? Either way, they could give Gaga the award as the Video Vanguard? The "Tricon" name just seems stupid and random. However, Gaga absolutely deserved it, and frankly, I think she deserved a lifetime achievement award from the VMAs a long time ago. Gaga has had so many iconic music videos, from "Bad Romance," "Telephone," "Born This Way," and so on. 

Most of the other awards were pretty expected. BTS won all four awards they were nominated for, with "On" winning Best Pop, Best Kpop, and Best Choreography, and the group as a whole winning Best Group. This wasn't surprising at all. The BTS fanbase, better known as ARMY, is absolutely rabid and will do anything to support their beloved Bangtan boys. This is a good thing, as in June, the ARMY quickly matched BTS's $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter- a fantastic example of celebrities and fans coming together to do a good thing. Anyways, I think BTS's awards were completely deserved. The boys consistently produce high-quality, cinematic music videos, and these awards are a great way to honor their amazing videography. 

However, the biggest award, Video of the Year, absolutely shocked me. I was so certain it was going to go to "Rain on Me. It already won a bunch of awards beforehand, and the awards are fan-voted, and both Gaga and Ariana have incredibly zealous fanbases. If it didn't go to "Rain on Me," then I expected it to go to "The Man" by Taylor Swift or "Everything I Wanted" by Billie Eilish, since both artists also have passionate stans. However, it went to "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd. This surprised me a ton, since I didn't think The Weeknd had the same kind of fervent fanbase as Gaga, Ariana, Taylor, or Billie. But I was happy with it, since "Blinding Lights" is probably one of my favorite songs ever made and the video was my favorite of the bunch. 

But more than that, I really liked his speech. It was really short, but he made the most of it, basically saying that it was hard to celebrate with all of the stuff going on in the world. But most importantly, he said "Justice for Jacob Blake, Justice for Breonna Taylor." I always respect the hell out of celebrities who use the platforms they have to do good in the world. The VMAs is a huge stage and The Weeknd used that platform to voice his support for two people wronged by the organizations that should protect them. Jacob Blake is in the hospital, recovering from seven gunshots, and yet he's cuffed to his bed. Breonna Taylor was in her bed when she was murdered by police. And yet the officers who shot them are still running free, while the seventeen-year-old boy who killed two people at a protest in Kenosha was rewarded by the cops. We need to scream "Justice for Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor" until those in power actually listen and give them the justice they deserve. 

Between Keke Palmer's opening monologue, many of the speeches made by winners, DaBaby's police brutality-alluding performance, the Video for Good award going to "I Can't Breathe" by H.E.R., and many of the commercials, the VMAs were very clear about their support of Black Lives Matter. However, I do feel like there was a little bit of racism in some of the categories, namely Best R&B. The award went to "Blinding Lights," which I thought was a deserving winner. However, anyone who's heard "Blinding Lights" can tell you that it's a straight-up pop song. It sounds like a mashup of "Take On Me" by a-ha and The Weeknd's own "Can't Feel My Face"- it's a clear 80s-inspired pop song. But I think that because it was made by a Black artist, MTV felt the need to pigeonhole it into the R&B category. It's very similar to what Tyler, the Creator said after he won the Best Rap Album Grammy earlier this year: “It sucks that whenever we, and I mean guys that look like me, do anything that’s genre-bending, they always put it in a ‘rap’ or ‘urban’ category. I don’t like that ‘urban’ word. To me, it’s just a politically correct way to say the N-word. Why can’t we just be in pop?" Meanwhile, the Best Pop category is mostly filled with white people, with the exception of BTS, Halsey, and Quavo, the latter of whom appeared on a Justin Bieber song. The Weeknd is mostly an R&B artist, but "Blinding Lights" is a clear pop song, so it should have been nominated in Best Pop instead of Best R&B.

One last comment on the winners is that Blackpink won Song of the Summer for "How You Like That." And look, I adore Blackpink. They have such a fierce vibe and they've made some of my favorite kpop songs. But I don't like "How You Like That" very much. It feels like they just recycled the same format as "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du" and "Kill This Love," except worse. I want to be happy that they won, but the song is just lackluster for me. Personally, I'd give the award to "Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles. It was released in November, but it's still been my summer jam. Harry Styles, as well as Dua Lipa, were both snubbed in a lot of the categories, so they reportedly refused to perform, which is a shame. They've been the two most consistently enjoyable artists this year for me, so I would have loved to see them perform. 

Now onto the performers!

My favorite performances were Gaga's Chromatica medley and BTS's "Dynamite." Gaga performed a ten-minute medley of "Chromatica II," "911," "Rain on Me," and "Stupid Love." Of course, my favorite part was "Rain on Me" with Ariana, because that performance had the only other moment in the show that shocked me. Ariana showed up, she and Gaga sounded great but it was pretty much what I expected- basically a recreation of the music video. And then right before the final chorus, Ariana decided to throw in some whistle notes, which blew me away. Ariana is easily one of, if not my favorite vocalists out there; I love how creative she is with her voice and how she constantly tries different ad-libs and high notes and never sings the same song twice. I've been a huge fan of her singing since I first heard her sing on Victorious, so whenever she flexes her insane range, it makes me happy to be alive.

As for BTS, I'm just always impressed with kpop performers. It's amazing how they manage to pull off impressive choreography while still sounding solid. They probably do use playback, but if you listen to the mic feeds, they actually are singing live, or at least singing along to playback. They don't sound perfect, at least in that mic feed, but considering that singing and dancing at the same time is pretty difficult, I'm surprised they don't sound worse. BTS just have a natural charisma as a group, and their choreography was amazing. The song they performed, "Dynamite," is also a bop. It's their first all-English song, and just earlier today, Billboard announced that it debuted at #1 on the Hot 100. "Dynamite" is the first song by a Korean act to top the Hot 100 and it had 265,000 downloads in its first week, which is the most first-week digital downloads since "Look What You Made Me Do" by Taylor Swift in 2017. I love kpop, and BTS's success here is nothing short of groundbreaking. 

After "Rain on Me" and "Dynamite," my favorite performance was probably The Weeknd's, mostly because I love "Blinding Lights" so much. He performed on a skyscraper, which was super rad. I also liked Miley Cyrus's performance of "Midnight Sky." She was probably lip-syncing, but the performance was still enjoyable- I loved the reference to "Wrecking Ball." DaBaby's medley of "Peep Hole," "Blind," and "Rockstar" was also a highlight, mostly for its direct reference of police brutality. Like I said before, I have so much respect for artists and celebrities who use their platform to speak out about important issues. Many artists, specifically rappers, have been speaking out about Black Lives Matter. Lil Baby's song "The Bigger Picture" is about police brutality, and DaBaby and Roddy Ricch made a remix of "Rockstar" called the "BLM Remix." And of course, artists like Kendrick Lamar have talked about police brutality and racism for their entire career. Hip-hop is important to Black culture and most rappers are Black themselves, so it is a cause important to their hearts. Hip-hop is also the most popular genre in the country, so their messages will be heard by millions of people, which is so important.

One artist who appeared a lot at the ceremony that I have mixed feelings on is Doja Cat. On one hand, Doja seems like a chill, funny person and it's always nice to see more female rappers in the mainstream. On the other hand, she is signed to Dr. Luke's label and regularly works with the producer. I can't in good faith support her music if she works with Dr. Luke, considering what he did to Kesha. However, her performance of "Say So" and "Like That" at the show was pretty good. The intergalactic set was fun and Doja had a ton of charisma and presence. She won the Best New Artist trophy, and I actually liked her speech a bit. She seemed kind of overwhelmed and sort of trailed off, which is exactly how I'd act in her situation. I noticed she didn't outright thank Dr. Luke, which is good- he doesn't deserve any thanks or good will. I just hope she stops working with him so I can maybe like her!

I'd say my favorite set design was probably the one they used for Maluma's performance of "Hawái," Keke Palmer's performance of "Snack," and CNCO's performance of "Beso." There was a normal stage, but they had it set up like a drive-in theatre, with some cars arranged, presumably with fans. My graduation took place at a local drive-in theatre with a similar set up to those performances, so I loved that they did something similar at the VMAs. They made a big deal of showing that the cars were Toyotas, so it was pretty much product placement, but I still enjoyed it. 

There were a few performances I really loved, but most of the performances were mediocre. However, the only one I outright disliked was the Black Eyed Peas' closer with Nicky Jam and Tyga. The first song they did was apparently called "Vida Loca." I had never heard it but it wasn't good. It basically stole the beat from "U Can't Touch This" and the "four, tres, two, uno" thing from "Fergalicious." It was lazy. Plus, they brought Tyga with them, a rapper who dated Kylie Jenner before she was a legal adult. Why is he still famous? The Peas did end their performance with "I Gotta Feeling," which is overplayed, yes, but it still has its charms. 

So overall this VMAs was a mixed bag. Nothing too terrible, but very few amazing moments. The Grammys were better. I'm not sure how to end this recap, so I'll see you Saturday.

Stellar