Niki told me they shortened the MTV VMA show from three hours down to two and limited it to only eight awards. Wow. If they trimmed out a couple hundred commercials, they could have fit it into a half hour.
Britney Spear's hyped opening act was horrible. Britney reminded me of those sad, lonely Anna Nicole Smith home videos where she missed her mouth and put lipstick around her eye and babbled into the camera while passing out. Britney's body wasn't ready for that outfit, her lip synching skills were poor and you couldn't really call what she was doing dancing. It was more like sleepwalking.
Of course it wasn't the first time I've been underwhelmed by her big opening.
What a mess. The rest of the show was pretty lousy. Sarah Silverman's monologue had a couple of good jokes, but it was equally slow and painful. She started off by picking on Britney, which came off as cheap because Britney had just flushed the remains of her career down the toilet.
The highlights of Sarah's act:
- "Britney Spears, everyone. Wow. She is amazing. She is 25-years-old and she's already accomplished everything she's going to accomplish in her life."
- "Have you seen Britney's kids? Oh my god, they are the most adorable mistakes you will ever see!"
- "It's weird to think that just a few years ago on this very show, she was this, like, sweet innocent little girl in slutty clothes writhing around with a python. That's not nice...calling Madonna a python."
- "I was talking to Cee-Lo backstage and I asked him: 'When you were growing up in Atlanta did you encounter any racism?' And he said something really interesting. He said: 'I'm Kanye West.'"
Chris Brown's dance performance was the highlight of the night. Also up there was Alicia Keys doing George Michael's Freedom! '90.
In the pre-show they promised something like five different Foo Fighters collaborations and in a way that only MTV can they cut into the tail end of Cee-Lo and the Foo Fighters doing Prince's Darling Nikki and then went back to the awards.
Didn't MTV learn anything from their horrible Live8 coverage? At least they didn't talk over the 60 seconds of that song they actually broadcast.
Here's another loser move: MTV gave people the ability to embed video segments from the performance into their blogs, just like YouTube does. But if you did put these videos into your blog like this one did, none of them are playable this morning. They all show the message "This video available only on MTV.com, your next video will begin shortly". Those embeddable videos lasted for less than 12 hours? Was it just a scam to get people to link to MTV.com?
Update: Debbie, the blogger I linked to, removed the bait-and-switch MTV.com video player code from her post and added a YouTube video and links out to a couple of the videos on MTV's site instead. She also added a comment below.
If this was their attempt at winning back an audience that had given up on them, then MTV failed as poorly as Britney did.
GrimJack
EZ Street
Jon Sable, Freelance
Comments (10)
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Adriane 484 days ago
I was beyond underwhelmed by the entire awards. I watched the pre-show and the entire awards in less than half an hour on fast forward thanks to Tivo.
I honestly coudn't tell the commercials from the performances. The art direction sucked almost as bad as Brit 'performance' who's idea was it to use poorly lit hotelrooms as stages? This year's Fashion Rocks was easier to sit through.
kate 484 days ago
Thank God someone said it. I watched maybe the first 15 minutes then could only stand to view bits and pieces. This let me know about all the other crap that happened throughout the show. I did see Chris Brown, which was great, but I was so bummed when Rhianna came out and, was it me, but it was pretty....bad. Better than Britney Spears, but we all saw that one coming.
Andrej 484 days ago
Besides Britney's performance, what sucked most to me was Justice's video losing to Rihanna's. I mean, come on. I liked MTV Awards when they gave recognition to the cinematography, art direction, special effects, and all things that are really behind a video.
If videos like Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of choice", Johnny Cash's "Hurt" or Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" were made in this year, they would lose against cutting-edge and sharp videos like "Thnks fr th mmrs" or "Girlfriend". Way to go, MTV, keep up the Sweet 16, Scarred and Next crap now, ever since you won't be playing any good videos anytime soon.
USMC CA 484 days ago
Folks are dogging on Britney. 2007 MTV Award show was the worst produce show ever. The dance sequence Chris Brown was the only thing worth watching. MTV give it up and get professionals to produce the show next time. Don't hide behind Britney!
Debbie 483 days ago
Hi! I'm the writer on the blog that you mentioned above (thanks for the link, btw!) and I totally agree with you. I was quite surprised when MTV suddenly stopped allowing the videos to play.
MTV has a lot of damage control to do. Hyping viewers up with rumors that Criss Angel would make Brit's opening act "magical"... using Britney's imminent train wreck of a performance to boost ratings... then removing the videos the next day...
Actually, the last sentence of your post says it all. Well written!
music awards dunzo 481 days ago
I was so not pleased with the music awards... the set up was so dumb... whatever happened to one main stage- instead of having small performances in little hotel rooms? las vegas woo hoo???? mtv tried to go out of the ordinary and it totally bombed....
at this point i never want to watch the vma's again! it sucked that bad!!! Chris brown you rocked!
Victoria Lashley 476 days ago
I remember just over 4 years ago that she(Britney Spears and Lil Kim bared their boobs together at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. I was wanting to see it but they delayed it! I hope they have it! I want to see it! They never reported about this! How come? I think Lil Kim did appear on that special(the 2003 VMAs-the one it got censored out)! The longest video delay in the award show's history without off air was 20 minutes(2003 VMAs)! Why didn't they cancel it at first? I hate delays like that? When will that lost appearance of the lost 20 minute ones will ever come back on media air?
Victoria Lashley 476 days ago
I missed the lost parts from over 4 years ago! My nightmare came true!
Surface Water Runoff 470 days ago
I am partial to Freedom 90, but the Alicia Keys version was less than I'd hoped.
Anonymous 120 days ago
This was thee worst MTV presentation ever in it's history, bad amateur production ( way too much digital animation instead of real people and scenes and...), terrible idiot for a host, crappy bands and artists up for awards, the clothes and fashion part of the show looked like a bunch of ghetto hookers and cheap pimps, what happened to music, more than that, what happened to rock and roll? Remember, MTV was started and became successful because of rock and roll. Someone with talent please save us all!!!