?J's MTV 2014 VMA highlights

MTV 2014 VMA's | Random J Pop

So, the MTV Video music awards happened. I pay so little attention to this shit in advance, that I only knew the VMA's were taking place because of tweets I was seeing on my timeline in regards to it. By which point the VMA's were already well under way. The Video Music Awards have become such a mess and a semi non-event over the years that people only watch it to see who is going to bring the controversy with their stage performance, who is going to show up on the red carpet with their pussy lip or titty hanging out of their dress and for shady looks from celebs in the crowd, which then get immortalized in GIF sets on Tumblr. As was the case with Rihanna last year who's looks and reactions were so iconic that she should have her own camera at every awards show.

Below is my list of stand out moments, both good and bad at the MTV 2014 Video Music Awards.

The babysitters club
Many of us have established by this point that Ariana Grande has a long way to go in the way of stage presence, but she's slowly getting there. The girl still can't dance. She's still like wallpaper and her management and wardrobe team seem to think that sexy = thrush inducing micro jumpsuits with knee high boots, a style which has now been almost as played out the floral dresses during Ariana's Yours truly era.

Ariana has a good voice and she sounds bloody good live. But she has no allure visually on stage. During her performance of "Break free" she got upstaged by the spaceship and her back-up dancers. Then during her performance of "Bang bang" she got upstaged by Jessie J who was working that stage for her life. Then Nicki came out holding her dress together and the entire thing was just about her and you forgot that Ariana was still on the stage with her.

Ariana Grande, Jessie J & Nicki Minaj @ MTV 2014 VMA's | Random J Pop

Katy Perry & Riff Raff
Katy Perry showed up to the VMA's with some man named Riff Raff. Apparently he's a 'rapper'...or something. Katy Perry has been dragged through every jelly belly lake and candy cane forest for miles over appropriation throughout the course of her messy Prism era and she was back at it again tonight; showing up looking like Levi fucked Staples in the arse on a step ladder in the drawing pin aisle. Katy thought she was slick, but Britney and Justin already went into the hall of fame back in 2001 at the American music awards with their his and hers double denim.

Katy Perry and Riff Raff VS Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake @ MTV 2014 VMA's | Random J Pop

This look is so identical that I can only deduct that Katy deliberately copied it because she liked it and thought she could do it better. Her and Riff Raff don't quite have the combined star power of Britney and Justin back in '01 to make it pop. I can vouch for Katy, I can't vouch for this Riff Raff man.

Nicki Minaj and Usher
Usher performed his new Pharrell Williams produced single "She came to give it to you" which features Nicki Minaj. I think his new single is shit. Usher and Pharrell have missed the boat on this being a hit, because everybody is pretty much done with these funky, Motown type, "Blurred lines" carbon copy type songs and I think people are getting tired of Pharrell spreading himself so thinly across the charts these days. People claim Pharrell is a Vampire. They ain't lying. He's bleeding artists dry and sucking hundreds of dollars out of their necks.

What didn't help Usher's case for trying to make this mess a hit was his live performance of it, which was a complete and utter mess. His vocals were all over the place and the whole thing just wasn't well presented.


Usher is a game veteran, but you wouldn't know it from this performance. He should be putting on better shows than this and have a stage manager / visual director in his pocket by now who can deliver better performance concepts than this. Every other act who took to the stage on this night had a much tighter stage setup than her had and they all gave better performances too.

The only memorable aspect of this performance was Usher going E. Honda on Nicki Minaj's arse. He head-butted that shit. Shoulder barged that shit. And then hundred hand slapped that shit.

Taylor Swift trying to dance
The term 'twerking' has lost all of its meaning ever since it migrated its way into popular culture via the vessel that is Miley Cyrus. Now every girl who can so much as move her waist deems the movement 'a twerk'. Every since Taylor 'twerked' in her music video for "Shake it off" she seems to think she's hood and down with the bitches. Hence why every single time the intermission DJ spun a hip hop track or King Beysus dropped a banger, she kept doing something like this...

Taylor Swift try'na do a thing @ MTV 2014 VMA's | Random J Pop

It made me uncomfortable, it made me want to call security to taser her to the floor and cuff her to make it stop. Taylor needs to go shake it off in the dark, off camera.

The church of King Beysus Christ
Beyoncé pretty much threw the Mrs. Carter World tour in the middle of the VMA's. Turning up wearing a stain glass window to baptise the auditorium into the faith of King Beysus Christ. It was all about her.

Now, Beyoncé is many things. She's a fraud. She's a liar. She's also a world class mimer. But she is a show-woman and there are very few women in the game I can name who can put on a show like she does. She commands the entire stage as though it's the easiest thing in the world to her and it probably is. Even when Beyoncé is surrounded by dancers, lights and giant stealth screens projecting visuals, she never gets lost in any of it. If she hadn't made that clear before, she did tonight. Beyoncé had every single member of the crowd on their feet singing to all of her songs. Beyoncé only performed songs from her self titled album. Not a single song prior got sung. Beyoncé could pretty much get away with not performing anything which came before her self-titled album and a lot of people would not care at this point, because songs such as "Flawless" and "Drunk in love" have not only become anthems for fans and disciples of Beysus Carter Christ, but they are now part of pop history, with the lyrics being referential terms in the same way "Single ladies" was. And given how ladies were getting turnt to the break section in "Blow", we can throw that song in there too.


Beyoncé's performance wasn't perfect. She ran through every single song on her album, but it all felt so disconnected. Nothing flowed right. What would have made a better performance would have been if she had selected fewer songs and performed longer versions of them, rather than cutting every song down to a truncated verse and a mish mash of the chorus before moving onto a different song. The performance didn't flow at all. Pulling off a strong and concise medley's is something Beyoncé has never been that good at. I felt the same way about her Super bowl performance. She's mastered the art of performance, but not song sequencing. Her performance was like somebody just skipping through her album. But after all, she's a grown woman. She can do whatever she wants and still turn Evian into Prosceco. Speaking of which, why did she not perform "Grown woman"? That shit is the best song that wasn't on the album.

Rita who!?
I liken Rita Ora to a Kardashian. She's famous and she's everywhere, but I have no idea how or why. In fact, in this sense she isn't really like a Kardashian, because we at least know how Kim got famous and then hauled her family onto the fame train. But Rita? Ask anybody in the US why she's everywhere and they won't be able to tell you. Ask anybody in the UK and they might be able to tell you. Might. This girl has only put out one album, yet she's in every magazine, at fashion shows, is the face of Adidas originals, the face of DKNY, the face of Moschino, Jeremy Scott loves the trick. She's f**ked Calvin Harris. She's in the new Fifty shades of grey movie adaptation, she's guest featuring on every bodies songs. Her management is on point. The girl is nothing, but she's everywhere.

She had a guest spot stint during a commercial break in the VMA's and MTV cut her ass off. It was amazing.


She best come kill us all then. This was the best thing MTV have done in a long while. It's a shame they didn't do the same to her performance with Iggy Azalea when she stepped out cosplaying as 2011 Rihanna.

In a nutshell...
The main highlight of the VMA's was definitely Beyoncé's performance. But this wasn't because her performance was so amazing. But more because nobody else really did anything that special and it seems that the MTV police are in force to ensure that their VMA performances remain controversy free so that there is not another repeat of Miley shaking her flat arse in Robin Thicke's groin and fucking herself with a foam finger on stage. The problem is, that this is kinda what people watch the VMA's for and have become conditioned to expect given that every year there is some scandal because of something somebody did, didn't do, or whipped out on stage. Without the customary messes we come to expect from the VMA's, it's just another boring award show that isn't really worth watching. And yet...we do. In the hopes we see that one big piece of mess.

Comments