High Point University

MTV VMA’s full of shock value but no substance

By Collin Giuliani, Staff Writer//

Audiences saw a mixed bag at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, hosted at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Among some mediocre moments from the show that were instantly forgotten, some of the entertainment was breathtaking and actually fun to watch… And then, some performers were real head scratchers. What were the worst moments from this past edition of the VMAs?
3. Twenty One Pilots & ASAP Rocky: I’m all for artist collaborations that make sense. That’s the point of awards shows – to see things that you’d never normally see. How the Grammys does it doesn’t always work, but when partnership of artists works, it can be an instant classic. This year at the Grammys, John Mayer doing “Thinking Out Loud” with Ed Sheeran worked. Though I didn’t agree with it, a lot of people loved the collaboration between Kendrick Lamar and Imagine Dragons at the Grammys in 2014. When MTV tried to do that this year at the VMAs, it never worked. Twenty One Pilots and A.S.A.P. Rocky was one of the last performances of the night, and it didn’t make any sense. The two artists did 30-second snippets of songs that the general public hasn’t heard of, cursed all over the place, forcing the MTV filters to work way into the night, and the performance didn’t sound decent on stage. I’ll give them credit for not lip-syncing like lots of artists did, but they should not have been there. If this was going to be the performance that finally broke Twenty One Pilots onto the mainstream scene, it didn’t work.
2. Nicki Minaj & Taylor Swift: This duo infuriated me. Minaj and Swift opened up the show, and it was a pretty good indication of how poorly the night was going to go. In 1990, we practically exiled Milli Vanilli from society for lip-syncing and not doing the vocals on their album; yet, in 2015, we’ve made Nicki Minaj a huge star for doing exactly the same thing, and nobody’s batted an eye. Think about it – she lip synced at the Billboard Music Awards, she lip synced at the VMAs, her voice is all computer-processed, and she’s stealing other people’s beats, for example, with her hit “Anaconda”. Minaj opened with “Trini Dem Girls” and “The Night is Still Young”, then brought Taylor Swift out onto the stage as she lip-synced Swift’s “Bad Blood.” Why Taylor was brought on stage to do that song during Nicki’s set-list was confusing in itself; the fact that it was lip-synced is even more infuriating. How we’ve allowed artists to get away with this despicable practice is baffling.
1. Miley Cyrus: Cyrus isn’t on the VMA’s losers list because she was shocking as the host. I’m not against shock value; it’s what made Madonna one of the biggest stars of all-time, and it’s what makes some of these awards shows memorable. Miley Cyrus is on this list because she wasn’t shocking. She was trying too hard. Any shock value that Miley Cyrus had in her at 9 p.m. when the show started was completely erased by 11:30 p.m. Her monologue wasn’t bad; there were some funny parts, and I chuckled from time to time. However, after the monologue, there was the marijuana selfie. Then, there was another skit about how she liked pot. If that wasn’t enough, there was another skit with Snoop Dogg/Lion about how she liked pot. References in her transitions between presenters and acts mentioned her love for drugs. And, just when you think she couldn’t beat the dead horse anymore, she finished with an entire song about how she loved pot.
Miley Cyrus in 2013 at the VMAs with Robin Thicke was a moment that I hated… but that was genuinely shocking. Nobody saw that coming. However, this? She failed every single time and eventually, viewers were fed up with it. Besides the pot references, there was also her inability to be serious. As a host, one of your jobs is to not get in the way of the show when the flow is good. I don’t like Justin Bieber, but when he performed two of his songs and then cried at the end, that was a very powerful moment. In any other show, you would’ve gotten a minute’s worth of silence while he was crying; Bieber later said he realized in that moment that he still had people that loved him and loved his music, and he felt grateful. What did Miley Cyrus do? After seconds of Bieber crying, she tried to transition to the next part by making some more drug references and shouts some more obscenities. I’m not saying that Miley Cyrus needed to go up there and make a Martin Luther King Jr.-esque speech, but at the very least, have respect for the artists performing. Cyrus was a horrible host and in the end, she blew it.