TMC
08-29-2017, 04:47 AM
http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/why-the-2017-mtv-vmas-felt-so-empty/
https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59a456f86c9e4147e946c1d4/master/w_790/kpvma1440final.jpg
Last year, the VMAs’ (http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/review-the-2017-vmas-were-beyond-saving.html?utm_campaign=vulture&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1) ratings dropped 34 percent (http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7488058/mtv-vmas-ratings-drop-65-million-viewers-across-nets) despite a legitimately star-studded show. This year’s ratings aren’t in quite yet (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/08/28/remind-me-again-why-are-we-watching-the-vmas/?utm_term=.5171a951ca46), but all signs point to a continued collapse. For once, though, not all of this is the award show’s fault.
It’s not the VMAs’ fault that the ceremony happened as Houston was becoming a swollen reservoir in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, just weeks after the tragedy in Charlottesville (and subtler tragedies (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/arts/music/mtv-video-music-awards-katy-perry-taylor-swift.html) in the news every day), meaning the national mood (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-mtv-vmas-20170827-story.html) is perhaps not set for watching Miley Cyrus and grannies slap ass. It’s not the VMAs’ fault—though they really could have foreseen it—that the broadcast coincided with the season finale of “Game of Thrones,” (http://variety.com/2017/music/news/tv-ratings-vmas-1202540775/) which much of the VMAs’ target audience probably prefers to Katy Perry (http://www.refinery29.com/2017/08/169866/katy-perry-vma-host-political-jokes-meaning) fidgeting with a spinner. And it’s not directly the VMAs’ fault that pop is currently a personality vacuum, that the charts are a haphazard melange of what streams well and what gets airplay and what plays well at EDM festivals, that its previous megastars are now floundering or big enough to skip the show, and that none of its rising stars have reached the level of a Beyoncé (https://goo.gl/4dNwWz) or a Rihanna (both absent), or a Taylor Swift (present in video but not in person).
But the VMAs certainly didn’t help itself (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/rob-sheffield-on-2017-mtv-vmas-lorde-katy-perry-and-more-w499926) by treating the most vital new acts as afterthoughts. Cardi B has a No. 3 smash and is magnetic on camera; she’s a no-brainer for this kind of gig, but was shunted to the pre-show. Meanwhile, performances by up-and-comers KYLE and Julia Michaels were both cut off mid-song. The latter particularly rankled, as Michaels is second only to Alessia Cara as the most “legit” female singer-songwriter pop’s produced in years—and certainly more interesting than Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes, whose performances were beige and uninterrupted. Also, the lack of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” (https://goo.gl/NiU6SC)—snubbed for Song of the Summer honors, even!—was particularly strange.
The omission was especially odd since the show constantly felt as if it was scrambling to scrape together content. Kendrick Lamar’s set was fiery—literally, with ninjas and fences aflame—technically astonishing, and every bit worth its Video of the Year award; it was also relegated to the thankless opening slot and to a visibly bored audience. Ellen DeGeneres presented an award to P!nk while admitting Cher wasn’t available. Last year the VMAs didn’t—or couldn’t—pull together a tribute to David Bowie or Prince; this year, Chester Bennington was remembered via a Jared Leto speech and footage of a Linkin Park set from 2010. Lorde’s set was an unsung dance routine to a deep Melodrama cut; while understandable—she had the flu, tweeting she was a “cute lil propped-up corpse”—it didn’t help the overall feeling of emptiness.
Technically, things did actually happen, including the premiere of Taylor Swift’s new video. There’s a lot that’s baffling about “Look What You Made Me Do,” but the strangest is that Taylor has yet to doanything. The VMAs would seem like a chance to remedy that, yet she didn’t show, premiering the song’s video unceremoniously early in the broadcast. It underwhelmed: stunningly expensive, lavishly filmed, full of references and Easter eggs—yet oddly hollow, a vicious subtweet to no one in particular.
Perhaps telling: When I watched the video after the broadcast, 80 percent of the comments were by bots. When I checked again this morning, that ratio remained. “You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation,” Beyoncé rapped, accurately, on “Formation”—but what does it make you when you incite the churning chatter of spammy algorithms?
As host, Katy Perry couldn’t take advantage of her supposed archrival’s stumble. Time goes slower in space, so when Perry took the stage in astronaut garb, it was only fitting that her jokes seemed to go on forever. Her routine was filled with all the best zings of last spring: gags about “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Fyre Festival and the world on fire. Befitting this year’s #wokeness brand, she dabbled in tepid political commentary; befitting being Katy Perry, it was all undone by teasing jokes about gaining a ton of weight and “I Kissed a Girl”–esque gags about kissing Rachel Maddow (but not really, guys), or one execrable extended skit where she consulted a “guru” who bequeathed “pop enlightenment” in the form of the melody to “Shape of You.”
The rest was exactly what you would expect. You expect an award called Best Fight Against the System (https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/lindsay-kornick/2017/08/28/more-liberal-virtue-signaling-mtv-vma-awards) being awarded by the system on a broadcast benefiting the system, that many recipients fought the system by skipping; you expect that MTV’s decision to give everyone the award has a certain cynical scent, of avoiding Twitter blowback for picking a side. You expect rank cynicism like asking the audience to funnel their clicks and tweets and refreshes into the Best New Artist vote because “this is one election where the popular vote actually matters!” (As someone who’s done time in the pop-media trenches, that isn’t even true.)
You expect that while the show dances around the issue of 45—scheduling YG and Nipsey Hussle’s “**** Donald Trump” during a commercial break, dusting off the year-old Hillary Clinton references—it will not explicitly mention him, meaning Republican politicians have called the old man out more than the VMAs did. You expect well-intentioned gestures like giving substantial airtime to Heather Heyer’s mother Susan Bro, announcing a foundation in her late daughter’s name, along with pastor and Confederate descendant Robert Wright Lee denouncing white supremacy. You kinda also expect them to be undercut by noxious uber-***** Milo Yiannopoulos, who was reportedly in the audience, though he didn’t show up on the broadcast.
The artists compensated for such half-stepping, at least a bit. Rapper Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” named for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, is fairly maudlin but sincere, and at least lodged that number into the memories of those who need it. (The presenters, who danced around saying the track’s title, as if it was an F-bomb, not so much.) And, despite her lack of iconic clips, P!nk justified her Video Vanguard Award by delivering a heartfelt speech about how she comforted her daughter after bullying and body-shaming; while not exactly a searing salvo against the system, it was still among the most genuinely moving VMA speeches of the past few years. Too bad she was talking into a void.
https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/59a456f86c9e4147e946c1d4/master/w_790/kpvma1440final.jpg
Last year, the VMAs’ (http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/review-the-2017-vmas-were-beyond-saving.html?utm_campaign=vulture&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1) ratings dropped 34 percent (http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7488058/mtv-vmas-ratings-drop-65-million-viewers-across-nets) despite a legitimately star-studded show. This year’s ratings aren’t in quite yet (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/08/28/remind-me-again-why-are-we-watching-the-vmas/?utm_term=.5171a951ca46), but all signs point to a continued collapse. For once, though, not all of this is the award show’s fault.
It’s not the VMAs’ fault that the ceremony happened as Houston was becoming a swollen reservoir in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, just weeks after the tragedy in Charlottesville (and subtler tragedies (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/arts/music/mtv-video-music-awards-katy-perry-taylor-swift.html) in the news every day), meaning the national mood (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-mtv-vmas-20170827-story.html) is perhaps not set for watching Miley Cyrus and grannies slap ass. It’s not the VMAs’ fault—though they really could have foreseen it—that the broadcast coincided with the season finale of “Game of Thrones,” (http://variety.com/2017/music/news/tv-ratings-vmas-1202540775/) which much of the VMAs’ target audience probably prefers to Katy Perry (http://www.refinery29.com/2017/08/169866/katy-perry-vma-host-political-jokes-meaning) fidgeting with a spinner. And it’s not directly the VMAs’ fault that pop is currently a personality vacuum, that the charts are a haphazard melange of what streams well and what gets airplay and what plays well at EDM festivals, that its previous megastars are now floundering or big enough to skip the show, and that none of its rising stars have reached the level of a Beyoncé (https://goo.gl/4dNwWz) or a Rihanna (both absent), or a Taylor Swift (present in video but not in person).
But the VMAs certainly didn’t help itself (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/rob-sheffield-on-2017-mtv-vmas-lorde-katy-perry-and-more-w499926) by treating the most vital new acts as afterthoughts. Cardi B has a No. 3 smash and is magnetic on camera; she’s a no-brainer for this kind of gig, but was shunted to the pre-show. Meanwhile, performances by up-and-comers KYLE and Julia Michaels were both cut off mid-song. The latter particularly rankled, as Michaels is second only to Alessia Cara as the most “legit” female singer-songwriter pop’s produced in years—and certainly more interesting than Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes, whose performances were beige and uninterrupted. Also, the lack of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” (https://goo.gl/NiU6SC)—snubbed for Song of the Summer honors, even!—was particularly strange.
The omission was especially odd since the show constantly felt as if it was scrambling to scrape together content. Kendrick Lamar’s set was fiery—literally, with ninjas and fences aflame—technically astonishing, and every bit worth its Video of the Year award; it was also relegated to the thankless opening slot and to a visibly bored audience. Ellen DeGeneres presented an award to P!nk while admitting Cher wasn’t available. Last year the VMAs didn’t—or couldn’t—pull together a tribute to David Bowie or Prince; this year, Chester Bennington was remembered via a Jared Leto speech and footage of a Linkin Park set from 2010. Lorde’s set was an unsung dance routine to a deep Melodrama cut; while understandable—she had the flu, tweeting she was a “cute lil propped-up corpse”—it didn’t help the overall feeling of emptiness.
Technically, things did actually happen, including the premiere of Taylor Swift’s new video. There’s a lot that’s baffling about “Look What You Made Me Do,” but the strangest is that Taylor has yet to doanything. The VMAs would seem like a chance to remedy that, yet she didn’t show, premiering the song’s video unceremoniously early in the broadcast. It underwhelmed: stunningly expensive, lavishly filmed, full of references and Easter eggs—yet oddly hollow, a vicious subtweet to no one in particular.
Perhaps telling: When I watched the video after the broadcast, 80 percent of the comments were by bots. When I checked again this morning, that ratio remained. “You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation,” Beyoncé rapped, accurately, on “Formation”—but what does it make you when you incite the churning chatter of spammy algorithms?
As host, Katy Perry couldn’t take advantage of her supposed archrival’s stumble. Time goes slower in space, so when Perry took the stage in astronaut garb, it was only fitting that her jokes seemed to go on forever. Her routine was filled with all the best zings of last spring: gags about “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Fyre Festival and the world on fire. Befitting this year’s #wokeness brand, she dabbled in tepid political commentary; befitting being Katy Perry, it was all undone by teasing jokes about gaining a ton of weight and “I Kissed a Girl”–esque gags about kissing Rachel Maddow (but not really, guys), or one execrable extended skit where she consulted a “guru” who bequeathed “pop enlightenment” in the form of the melody to “Shape of You.”
The rest was exactly what you would expect. You expect an award called Best Fight Against the System (https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/lindsay-kornick/2017/08/28/more-liberal-virtue-signaling-mtv-vma-awards) being awarded by the system on a broadcast benefiting the system, that many recipients fought the system by skipping; you expect that MTV’s decision to give everyone the award has a certain cynical scent, of avoiding Twitter blowback for picking a side. You expect rank cynicism like asking the audience to funnel their clicks and tweets and refreshes into the Best New Artist vote because “this is one election where the popular vote actually matters!” (As someone who’s done time in the pop-media trenches, that isn’t even true.)
You expect that while the show dances around the issue of 45—scheduling YG and Nipsey Hussle’s “**** Donald Trump” during a commercial break, dusting off the year-old Hillary Clinton references—it will not explicitly mention him, meaning Republican politicians have called the old man out more than the VMAs did. You expect well-intentioned gestures like giving substantial airtime to Heather Heyer’s mother Susan Bro, announcing a foundation in her late daughter’s name, along with pastor and Confederate descendant Robert Wright Lee denouncing white supremacy. You kinda also expect them to be undercut by noxious uber-***** Milo Yiannopoulos, who was reportedly in the audience, though he didn’t show up on the broadcast.
The artists compensated for such half-stepping, at least a bit. Rapper Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” named for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, is fairly maudlin but sincere, and at least lodged that number into the memories of those who need it. (The presenters, who danced around saying the track’s title, as if it was an F-bomb, not so much.) And, despite her lack of iconic clips, P!nk justified her Video Vanguard Award by delivering a heartfelt speech about how she comforted her daughter after bullying and body-shaming; while not exactly a searing salvo against the system, it was still among the most genuinely moving VMA speeches of the past few years. Too bad she was talking into a void.