This year’s American Music Awards were as lackluster as ever
American Music Awards were last night, let’s all do a collective yawn for the repetitive dribble that has been dominating the music industry lately. The AMA’s has been the same recycled people winning awards over an over again for the past few years and has turned into a commercialized joke of epic proportions. Alas, the joke has gotten slightly funnier this year, with performances that were too hilarious to be true.
The awards kicked off with Katy Perry doing an impression of a geisha for no reason at all and sang another boring power ballad that started the awards off on an Ambien induced note. Her stage set up was visually stunning, but they should have started off the show with someone who packed a bigger punch.
Pitbull hosted the awards and I don’t know about you, but that guy reminds me of a cheesy sleazeball who owns a seedy club in the middle of Reno, Nevada. That visual kind of went with his performance that night. Pitbull and Kesha proceeded to mix drunken bar music with country for a cluster-fuck of bad coupled with worse.
Imagine Dragons performed “Demons” and “Radioactive” because the American Music Awards always has to throw in an indie band, that isn’t too mainstream, but indie enough for people to think something innovative is happening.
Rihanna won the icon award for reasons that are still trying to be determined, and performed a classy version of “Diamonds”, which was a nice change from seeing her gyrating across the stage for five full minutes. She still doesn’t have the best vocals, but they have obviously improved.
Probably the most entertaining performance of the night was Lady Gaga and R. Kelly’s performance of their uncomfortably hyper-sexual song “Do What U Want.” Both of them doing their own rendition of R. Kelly’s hip-hopera “Trapped in the Closet”, they pulled off a theatrical performance of the song. When R. Kelly yelled “Who put these pictures on Instagram!?”, I face-palmed. I must say, Lady Gaga’s vocals are top-notch, but her eye-roll worth antics (such as showing up to the awards on a horse made of two people) usually overshadow that.
TLC returned to the stage with Lil Mama in place of the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez and it was a heartwarming moment for the awards. Although, when Lil Mama rapped Left Eye’s verses, it seemed like the track did an awkward mashing of the original song and Drake’s “Started From the Bottom”. Regardless, it was definitely a nice moment for the award show.
The awards closed with Miley Cyrus. This performance looked like Miley Cyrus went on Tumblr for the first time and tried to do her best impression of a hipster. The botched 90’s graphic of a tweaking cat singing her lyrics paired with her leotard set with cats emblazoned all over it, was the most try-hard thing I’ve seen since her pulling a joint out of her purse and smoking it on stage.
The fact that it was an emotional song made it extra weird and made America take her a little less serious, which is the last thing she needs right now. Her vocals were surprisingly solid, which means that all she had to do was be serious for once. She could have put on a nice gown and sang, but no. These awards were lackluster as usual, I always say “Hope it’s better next year”, but the cynicism only continues to grow as the award scene continues to get more and more monotonous.
