It's true! and Unusually, all four acts where competing for the same role in music, as they were all Female solo acts. Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Pink have all been busting ass around the circuit as they were again and again put against eachother in award shows. The opening of the award season ( in my book) with the MTV Music Video Awards, and the closing with the Grammys, had all 4 pulling major feats trying to prove themselves the best woman. after watching the grammys and feeling like all the performances were just so...familiar in some way to their shows earlier this year, to go back and evaluate all the shows. I've decided to break it down by show, going from who faired the best over all these preformances to who faired the worst. The critera on how I will judge these preformances is:
1). Song Choice
2). Concept
3). media reaction to preformance during the show
4). Reoccuring Theme between VMA and Grammys
As you can tell I left out awards won. That's because the VMAs are crap, and the Grammys haven't deserved respect since John Mayer beat out both Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen for male album.
MTV Music Video Awards
Lady Gaga hands down won the MTV music video awards, and this should be a surprise to noone. Lady Gaga obliterated the music scene this year when it came to juxtaposing interesting imagery with good music. Her videos were increasingly stylized with her "Haus of Gaga" vision and the video for "Paparazzo" complete with it's big name actor/directors, random swedish, and storyline that almost eclipsed the music, brought to mind the likes of Toni Braxton's "unbreak my heart" and Celine Dion's "It's all coming back to me now" (side note, can we agree to just call her Celine now? I'm pretty sure noone will ever have the impact that she's had while having the same name).
With the VMA's she was really afforded her first opportunity to wow the world. Lady Gaga had a preformance that will stand the test of time and will absolutely be considered one of their best moments forever. While she had already established herself as a producer of great danve music with her first two songs, and established herself as someone who was actually talented through her online acoustic videos, this was the first time America was really able to see her amazing visuals with her ability to sing and play. at around 3:06 you see a stunned P Diddy reaching for an appropraite recation, which was basically how the majority of the populace reacted to her strange costumes and sudden bleeding onstage.
I Have to give second place to Taylor Swift, almost entirely for media reaction. We all saw the saga of poor little white girl getting interupted by Kanye West, who even before tonight seemed to be on a one man mission to ruin any amount of respect that fans held for him. While she handled his douchebaggery nicely, Ms. Swift also gets this for choosing her most popular song, Romeo and Juliet, and preforming it in possibly the cutest way imaginable. I don't know who was responsible for the prom-night F train ride and subsequent cab dance in front of Radio City, but it was genius. Ms Swift's inability to recreate her perfect vocals of the studio track (which will become a running theme) is irrelevant as she dances with fellow teenagers in what is basically my daydreams as I ride the L to my miserable job. It's obviously partially pre-recorded but who cares, it's frivolity at its best.
Pink, or P!nk, as she's apparently changed her name to (to my disdain), deserves third. To begin with, I think Pink is one of the most consistently underrated artists of her field. The girl has a great unique voice, both in terms of singing ability and the image she attempts to present of herself onto the world.
Pink is almost the penultimate single singer. Everyone loves the songs she puts out as singles and guiltily sings along with them, but at the same time those people refuse to buy her cd as they never know what they will get. While it's admirable that Pink attmepts to be involved with her music, sometimes her lyrics suffer because of it. I remember reading the University of Michigan humor newpaper "The Every Third Weekly" when I was in high-school and they had an article about how Jesus hated Creed. When discussing the lyrics, jesus is quoted as Saying " Pink and a retarded monkey could write better lyrics". Sadly, this is often true. She ruins songs with awkard choices. In her new cd, which is the circus themed-FunHouse, she shows this in the ittle track. A great song about her anger issues and how the atmosphere of her home and has changed due to her divorce, she puts in the line "This used to be a Funhouse/but now it's full of evil clowns". The image completely detracts from her great metaphor she spends the rest of ths song building up and causes the listener to giggle and loose focus for the rest of her song.
Luckily, Pink did not choose to sing this song at the VMAs. instead she chose the amazing single "Sober". To go along with her circus themed cd, she apparenly made an entire circus themed preformance for her concert that she brought to the stage at the VMAs. The vocal changes from the recorded version shows that, if she's not singing live, she at least went to the effort to record a new track to match her acrobatics. More imporatantly though, she is fucking KILLING herself for the audience. I cannot think of any other artist today who would be willing to put the physical and metnal work into choreography something of this caliber. This is 100x beyond Tommy Lee's 360 degree rotating drumset.
In last place is Beyonce. Beyonce in all honesty did everything right, just in the wrong year. She picked Single Ladies, which was a smash hit and went on to win most of the awards. She made sure to mix it up a bit by leading with a different song on her album, a ballad that sounded great with the wierd tribalist feel to it as it segued into single. However, at the end of the day, it was just Beyonce commanding that she be center of the scene while recreating her video and showing off her thighs in her continued effort to become the new Tina Turner (see exhibt A.) it's not that this is in anyway bad, it's just with such great concepts, Beyonces gyrations, which are almost aggresively awkward in the beginning, just don't cut it in a year with such higher concepts. She went on to win best video and best choreography, but while the video was a hit, the oversaturation killed the effect for the live preformances.
THE GRAMMYS
The Grammy's I'm actually going to have to give to Beyonce, though I'm surprised of the choice myself. Her stage design is still the same deal with alot of supporting characters ( this time in some kind of Riot division fo the Rhythym Nation) and the majority of the effects where colored strobe lights that made you go blind and only see that one spot in the middle that is Beyonce still gyrating her hips out of socket. The song choice was great. Her song "If I were I boy", is actually interesting as its a story that you don't get to hear that much. A habitually wronged woman talking about how she would act if she was in the position of her lover is acutally new and interesting. when it transitionied into Alanis Morriestte's man-hating athem "You Oughta Know", it was, in a word, perfect. If I were a boy, while certainly full of anger, is somewhat passive in putting any blame on the male for doing the female wrong. the juxtaposition was amaing, so great in fact that gossip blogs started dropping hints that the idea behind the preformance was that Jay-Z was cheating on Beyonce. The only thing better than a great stand-alone preformance is one so good that people think there must be real-life motivation to it.
I begrudingly give number two to Lady Gaga. While the set design was fun, the overall concept seemed much more of a stew than the genius of her VMA preformance. Her ourtfit, while fitting with the mood of Poker Face, didn't really fit in with anyone else within the set. Also, while Pokerface was the song that was being nomintaed, by this point she was on her 3rd single after Pocker Face and was not what the auidence really wanted. The entire MC character her one dancer does was just annoying. The beginning and the end where really so disconnected to me that I would have preferred if it was just the second half. She and Elton John fit together much better than I thought they would. In fact, If her performance had only been the second half I may have given her first place. her outfit fits more with the weird leg/doublepiano she and Elton play. If it werent' for elton John would have gotten third place.
Instead in third we again have Pink. Pink has been losing to all these other bitches in the awards and knew they were probably gonna beat her again. Therefore, she decided to pull a newer song out of her bag of tricks. the song, Glitter in the Air, is hard to place. It's a ballad, but unlike most of Pink's songs there's not alot of power and aggression behind it. However, the preformance was beautiful. Her initial outfit was remeniscist of Annie Lennox, and everyone was shocked when she dropped the shroud to reveal a few strips of well placed tape, the likes of which had not been seen since The Fifth Element. It was really a beautiful song. This time she had even less support as before. I was less worried than other people may have been, since i recognized the fabric from Jane Krakowski's faboulous turn in the musical 9. The spinng, water, and positions she got in were really again a testimate to how far she's willing to go for her fans, which is amazing when she isn't getting the respect she deserves.
Switching places with Beyonce is Taylor Swift, who fails for almost the same reasons Beyonce did during the VMAs. Taylor swift is cute, she write sweet songs, but she can't sing live. I'm not being mean, I tried watching other live performances she's done and she just can't replicate the same simple confidence and ability in her studio recordings. I'm fine with this, as she's only 17 years old and has time to grow, but other people are obviously annoyed. Her beginning is okay musically but she seems unable to make correct vocal decisions when she has to push certain areas or hold notes. She then brings out Stevie Nicks, acting like it's her dream. However, everything about her music and persona seems to contradict liking Stevie. It's cute to watch her try to match Stevie but she just fails miserably. She translates into a hokey version of her Romeo and Juliet that would be okay for a concert but is completely inappropriate for the Grammy's. While the banjo player is great, it's just not the right mood for the build-up we've been given by dragging out Stevie Nicks. Taylor again struggles vocally through this part, and leaning on gravely stevie nicks to make your song have "pretty" vocals is never a good idea.
In between these two awards where the AMAs, which Pink was ineligable for since Sober was the year before. I considered adding it but after careful review i realized that due to Adam Lambert's face humping, noone really knew what anyone else did that year for the awards. After a reiew, Gaga's melody was pretty good, Beyonce was decent, and Taylor Swift was just atrocious. However, the AMA's are not extravangant as the other two shows, so all three scaled back to a degree.
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