Loading ...Oh HI! It’s dickdogfood. I welcome you to Idolator’s liveblog of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Now before I became a quasi-anonymous commentator legend, I was known as Michael Daddino. (I still am, in certain obscure circles.) Once, during that long-gone era, I watched 24 hours of MTV and wrote about it on the internet in real-time; thus the concept of the liveblog was forged in the smithy of my soul. And today I return to my old stomping grounds, all Proverbs 26:11-style, to point and laugh at…well, what’s it going to be today, kiddies? What’s it gonna be? Contrite Britney? Egotasmic Kanye? The JoBros making their inevitable Fleet Foxes move? Nickleodeon crossovers? Candidate cameos? Overrehearsed spontaneity? Underwhelming medleys? Regrettable covers? A smidge of actual entertainment? Yes, we are likely to get them all: the stars will it so. The handwringing and the laughter begin after the jump.
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The Video Music Awards: They’re Coming! Get Ready!
We have about 52ish hours until Britney Spears trades on her recent notoriety to open the 25th-anniversary installment of MTV’s Video Music Awards, and like last year, you are all invited to watch with Idolator as we break down the goings-on–and, maybe, break down–in real time. So do come back at 8 p.m. ET for the pregame show and the live broadcast, which starts at 9! Sadly, I will not be handling live-blogging duties as a) I was only given a red-carpet pass, and not access to watch the broadcast being simulcast; and b) even if I did high-tail it back to my hotel room really really fast, the damn thing doesn’t air on the West Coast until 9 p.m. PT. But I’ve handed over the task to someone who’s more than capable: Our own Dickdogfood, who pioneered the art of the MTV liveblog all the way back in 2001, which is like forever ago in Internet time.
“Blender”’s Purr Seems A Bit Muted These Days
Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by a writer who’s contributed to many of those magazines, as well as a few others! In this installment, he looks at the new issue of Blender:
Strummin’ In The Girls’ Room: Jason Mraz’s Folksy Ditty Climbs The Charts
Last fall and winter, chart fans noted the return to the radio of a style that, until recently, was pretty unfashionable on Billboard’s Hot 100: pure-pop female singer-songwriters.
Strummier and sunnier than their Lilith counterparts in the ’90s and closer in kinship to California’s post-Joni ladies of the ’70s, two gals with hard-to-spell names led this ‘07 boomlet with a pair of Top Five smashes: Colbie Caillat, with “Bubbly,” and Sara Bareilles, with “Love Song.” The surprise success of American Idol’s Brooke White, who seemed every week to be channeling Carole King, only fueled the theory.
Trouble is, neither Caillat nor Bareilles has had an easy time following up those easy-listening hits. Caillat has fared respectably, with a No. 20 followup (”Realize”), but not spectacularly. And Bareilles is completely stalled, with “Love Song” still leading the Adult Contemporary chart but no followup–on the Hot 100, or anywhere–all these months later.
So, new theory: maybe pop fans weren’t latching onto these ladies’ earthy-girl personas at all, but their sound.
Which brings us to Jason Mraz. He makes a big move into the Top 10 this week and, just in time for fall, proves the bedroom-girlypop sound can still hit big in 2008, even if the act in question possesses an extra Y chromosome.
Los Angeles “Times” Writers’ Wits Fall Victim To The Power Of Scherzinger
For better or worse, no one covers the innumerable amount of awards given to producers of cultural product than the Los Angeles Times, and this weekend, two of their bloggers made their predictions for Video Of The Year award at this Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. However, some sort of gas must have been leaking into the Times‘ cubicle farm that day, since both of them picked the Pussycat Dolls’ scaffolding-happy clip for “When I Grow Up” to pick up the top prize.
Our “Now!” Comps Have So Much Growing Up To Do
Britain’s The Independent celebrates the 70th incarnation of the pop-comp series Now! with an extensive list of the hits and misses among the compilation’s selections, which number 2,701 songs over the last 25 years. While the quality level of our Stateside counterpart doesn’t nearly reach the heights of the original (the first volume of the UK series featured “Love Cats,” after all), surely I could do the same for the 28 volumes that have shown up on our shores, and in our stores.
New Kids On The Block Will Probably Not Have A Bunch More Hits
The Video Music Awards’ Technical Nominations: Apparently, Getting The Pussycat Dolls To Dance In Sync Is A Crowning Achievement
The technical categories for this year’s Video Music Awards–Best Choreography, Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Special Effects, Best Cinematography, and Best Art Direction–were announced today, and the big winner, inexplicably, is the Pussycat Dolls’ “When I Grow Up,” which received nods for… More »
