A Review of the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards

Where does one start when one talks about the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards? This year will mark the first year in a few where I actually took time out of my Sunday evening to watch the VMA's. I'll start out by saying that when it all came down to it I was only able to stomach the first half of this pitiful award ceremony. What happened to the days where the VMA's had a well rounded set of nominees and winners, fewer performances, and a ceremony that wasn't oozing with advertisement? Of course the talk of the evening is the greatly anticipated and what ended up being a great let down performance by Britney Spears, but I'm going to hold off on talking about the would be comeback of the pop princess until later first I'll touch upon my other issues on this years start studded event.

Where did all the categories go?! Twelve awards were handed out at this years VMA's which is cut in half from the 23 that was given away in 2006. Of these awards there were a few new ones that were quite frankly foolish if anything. This year saw the first award given out for the Quadruple Threat award which Justin Timberlake will take home because he sings, acts, and has his own clothing line. Don't get me wrong I like Justin Timberlake but compared to the other nominees his list of achievements isn't as amazing as those of Bono who besides from music and entertainment tops was recognized for being a social activist or even Jay-Z for that matter who is a very prominent business man aside from a rapper. The award itself is quite laughable to begin with, I mean normal people everyday take on a number of different projects at a time and don't get a huge award for them. I'm sorry but I don't see why just because these celebrities take on multiple projects at a time and have all these things going on should be something awarded at a video music awards show.

One other award that really struck me as not making the most sense would be the Monster Single of the year award. This award featured ten nominees of ten rather well known songs that are in fact played a lot. My only problem with these nominees are more than half of them haven't been monster singles for anywhere close to being a year. Songs like "The Way I Are" by Timabland, "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" by Fall Out Boy, and "Umbrella" by Rihanna among others in this category were all made big singles earlier this summer let alone earlier this year. If you came to me with Timbaland's "Give It To Me" or Fall Out Boy's "This Ain't A Scene, It's an Arms Race" then maybe we'd have something. Instead MTV nominated 8 songs that are all relatively new hits and two songs that have been around for quite some time on the radio and then one of those new hits conveniently took home the moon man. The rest of the evenings awards didn't pick at me too much except for the Collaboration award which partly confused me as to why "Beautiful Liar" while a great song was better than the ultra popular "SexyBack" and where the hell was the summers other major hits like Timbalands "Give It To Me" or even Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" but enough about the discouraging awards.

Advertisement is a big deal I couldn't agree more about that but it just seems like this years VMA's were exploding with unneeded sponsors and advertisements. The Emmy's, the Oscars, and the Grammy's all have their fair share of big time advertisements, companies pay millions of dollars to have their ads play and to sponsor things during the Oscars and the Super Bowl each year but it seemed to me that it was really obvious this year at the VMA's. It's always such a normal thing during the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl that no one seems to notice and they even get excited but the VMA's just seemed repetitive and down right annoying.

The performances this year (minus Britney Spears which I'm still holding off on) were quite frankly far too many. At the 2006 VMA's there were a total of twelve performances while this year we were forced to sit through roughly twenty performances and I think that counts the random jumps to the exclusive suite parties being thrown by the likes of Fall Out Boy, Kanye West, and Justin Timberlake which I don't think were really needed. The VMA's have caught slack for the past few years with a drop in viewer ship as well as poor reviews of the award ceremony itself. Heading to Vegas was a nice touch but the abundance of performances, the suite parties which were annoying, and the unattractive set was not a turn in the right direction for music's biggest night (next to the Grammy's). My advice to MTV is go back to Radio City Music Hall in New York City. New York is where MTV lives and thrives and Radio City is classier and which is after tonight's fiasco exactly what MTV needs.

Now to the moment you've all been waiting for the highly anticipated comeback performance from Britney Spears. This performance has been talked about and hyped up for a little while now and I will admit that I myself was looking forward to this performance and will also admit that I was pretty disappointed. After hearing her new song "Gimme More" a little over a week ago I was pleasantly surprised that the song actually kept my interest which isn't something I expected from Britney after the past year of tabloid bombshells. Britney seemed rather unprepared, comfortable, and all around not into it tonight on stage. She was clearly lip-syncing which is classic Britney fashion but was far from perfect and she did not seem to have very much fun up there. Looking at past performances at the VMA's made by Britney there was a definite lack of enthusiasm and power about this performance.

However my review of Britney's performance isn't all criticism and I don't feel that it was a disaster like many seem to be feeling in the few short hours since the awards concluded. I give major props to Ms Spears to even get up there and do this performance. She's been out of the game for what almost three years? She's fallen victim of tabloids and paparazzi for the train wreck that her life had appeared to become and to have all of her personal troubles exposed to the world and her peers to get up in front of her peers after such a long time and even do some kind of performance takes a lot and I have respect for Britney for that. Because you know even if the performance was a complete knock out and ended up being the (good) highlight of the evening every single musical artist in that room was going to be passing some kind of judgment on her performance. In any case this performance got people talking and they will continue to talk and I think in the long run that will be good. Despite its lackluster the performance put Britney back on the map and I think it will do nothing but help the album that she is planning to release this November.

In conclusion this years VMA's reminded me why I stopped watching the award show. Next year MTV should bring back actual awards, head back to New York City and cut down on the number of performances done. Also make more practical and well rounded nominations that truly span the full length of a year in music. The Emmy's, Grammy's, and Oscar's can pull off a well rounded base of nominations every year why does MTV seem to find this concept so difficult? Perhaps it's because MTV is more about what's big now than what than what was big in January. Perhaps they should change it to the "Summer 2008 Video Music Awards" next year if they plan to continue with this trend.