Last night, the MTV Video Music Awards took place. Of course, awards shows can be fun…unless you have a real beef with what is genuinely the year’s best. Personally, I despise such narrow awards processes that fail to capture the year’s best but rather stick with the popular choices. Why do they do that? Money, of course. If the actual best are presented with awards, no one would turn out to watch the shows, a sad but true fact.
I write this because of the Best Video Award given out last night to Miley Cyrus‘ “Wrecking Ball” video. And I thought long and hard about that. It doesn’t matter wheter I like the song or not, it’s whether I objectively chose the best video. And “Wrecking Ball” was not the best video. Not by a long shot.
Last year, a band by the name of The Paper Kites created a stunning video using several thousand individual singers of their song, “Young“. Each video was edited, a shot removed, and stitched together to form a cohesive and linear video of every edited picture, all singing the song. Was this gem considered? Likely not. It has almost 650,000 views. And while that’s impressive, it’s not close to the near 700,000,000 views “Wrecking Ball” received.
Now, I’m not saying that “Young” should have won. Nor am I saying that it was the best. But with the ability of MTV to reach deep, they could certainly have explored all videos that are real contenders. And I WILL say that “Wrecking Ball” was not the best video. But it won.
This is why awards programs are worthless. How they are appreciated, and thrive like they do is beyond me.
I would love to see a real awards show, one that takes into account everything that is good enough for the contest.
The Grammys have turned into the same thing. Extremely hard to watch. Yet, like a fool, I watch every year hoping things will change. They don’t.