2005 MTV VMAs

Don't Give Me That Look



Well; I watched all of it. Did I enjoy all of it? Hell no, but I tried to stick it out and deal with even the worst of the garbage. This "award" show was broadcast from beautiful Miami, Florida and hosted by Sean "Puffy, Puff Daddy, P.Diddy, Diddy" Combs. No, I don't know why. I'm not going to give any kind of chronological breakdown, because that would be annoying; instead I'm gonna talk about everything categorically:

Hosting - No, just no. Look, I like Diddy more than most people, but this is not his thing. His delivery stunk, his improvisational (or the things that I have to assume were improvised) stuff wasn't funny, and the prepared bits all bombed. His dancing, while apparently not intentionally, were the funniest parts of his act.

The Awards - I find that a lot of people get a little... "confused" with the VMAs. Even though they are the VIDEO Music Awards, people seem to enjoy talking about how bad the winners are musically in comparison to everyone else. The VIDEOS are being commended, not the songs. That said, the winners sucked.

Green Day took most of the awards; with various videos from their "American Idiot" album. I wasn't a huge fan of the album, so the constant drone from the media about how good it was is tiring. I think they were actually getting awarded for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" most of the time. It was a good video, but I felt like there were better choices out there.

Kelly Clarkson won 2 or 3 times, which was strange since everyone watching (including the audience and HER) expected her Moonman haul on this night to be somewhere around zero. I have never really seen the video she won for ("Since You've Been Gone"), but I had heard about previously and just assumed it was crap. I could have been mistaken, but probably not.

Personally, I thought the best videos this year that I saw were Kanye West's "Jesus Walks" and My Chemical Romance's "Helena". In hindsight, the "Jesus Walks" video isn't really THAT good, but it tried really, really hard to be. That should count for something. "Helena" on the other hand was legitimately good; excellent choreography, some semblance of a story, the required number of performance shots, etc. Can you really get better than a zombie ballerina? Didn't think so.


Performances - The bread and butter; since these awards don't mean much of anything. I'll go one-by-one.

Green Day "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" - They might have been lipsyncing, but if they were, it wasn't obvious to say so definitively. This was a straightforward performance, and they sounded pretty good. The pyro was nice I guess. 7/10

Ludacris "Pimpin All Over The World" - They tried to "class it up" a little with some piano, I guess it was a nice touch. Went a little nuts on dancers and breakdowns and garbage like that. Ludacris also fell prey to the "I need to have some member of my posse up here ruining my performance" thing. 6/10

MC Hammer "Can't Touch This (remix???)" - This wasn't really a full performance; but I needed to mention it because it was HI-LARIOUS. They tried to freshen the song up or something, but they just made it like 57x worse. He must be hurting for money.

Shakira "Spanish Song Title That I Don't Know Off Hand" - This was actually pretty good; even that guy that does the song with her whose name I don't know. her dance moves are questionable, but she can sing and on the looks front... well, yeah. 8.5/10

R. Kelly "Trapped In The Closet" - This performance consisted of R. Kelly lipsyncing and acting out the parts of every character. It sounds like a terrible idea, but he seemed to have put some effort into it. You haven't lived until you've seen R. Kelly switch back and forth between playing himself, a woman, that woman's husband, and that husband's gay lover within a matter of seconds. 8/10

The Killers "Mr. Brightside" - This performance was done at some area hotel I think. It wasn't so hot. Brandon Flowers (the lead singer) may have "enjoyed" Miami a little to much the night before. More importantly, he was wearing a white suit jacket on top of a black V-neck t-shirt. Bad times. 5/10

P. Diddy, an orchestra, Dead 90s Rapper #2, Snoop Dogg "Don't Know What To Call This" - Literally SECONDS before this started, I said to myself "Shouldn't Diddy have started fellating Notorious BIG by now?" Well what do ya know... This was a good performance. "Juicy" was in there, along with other stuff; all done over a full orchestra. 8/10

Generic Reggaeton Artists "Reaggaton Is Terrible" - Daddy Yankee (I only know this guy's names because Jorge Posada has the song played before all of his at-bats at Yankee Stadium) and some other dudes did excerpts of their terrible songs. Horrible. But wait! While introducing this act, Fat Joe made a little remark towards 50 Cent; joking about the massive security force that he travels with. MORE ON THAT LATER. 2/10 for the music, 14/10 for Fat Joe provoking 50 Cent

Coldplay "Speed of Sound" - One of my favorites; but they really sounded like crap. I don't know what happened. Not much more to say. 5/10

Kanye West f/ Jamie Foxx "Gold Digger" - Best performance of the night, hands down. I was really shocked to head Jamie Foxx sing this strongly. Getting the crowd to chant "We need prenup!" deserves a ribbon or something. 9.5/10

Mariah Carey "Two Songs That I Hate" - I really, really dislike Mariah Carey; so much so that there's not even a point to discussing my feelings on her performance because I'm going to say that it sucked either way. Sucked/10 (But seriously, it was bad)

50 Cent f/ Tony Yayo "Candy Shop, Outta Control, So Seductive" - This stunk until Tony Yayo joined in did the Yayo things that are entertaining, like his ridiculous "shake my hand in front of my face really fast" dance. The real story here was the profanity-laced tirade directed at Fat Joe that they went into at the conclusion of the song. Most of it was censored, but I did make out "Fat Joe is pussy". 8/10 just for that.

My Chemical Romance "Helena" - They didn't sound too great live. Watching the zombie ballerina woman dance on stage wasn't as impressive as it is in the video. At the end the singer yelled "This is you grandma" nice moment. 7/10

Kelly Clarkson "Since You Been Gone" - I really didn't understand why she was closing a show of this magnitude (this spot is usually reserved for BIG TIME people) but she did well with it. She was getting drenched with water towards the end for some reason. Basically she went nuts for 6 minutes. 8.5/10



And that's that. The show wasn't very good overall, but there were some bright spots along the way. MOVE THE SHOW TO NYC/LA, NOW.