No, it was rude. You know, awards shows have absolutely nothing to do with talent, quality or achievement, they are all about popularity. Other than Green Day and Eminem (oh yes and Kanye himself) I don’t own a single album by any of the people who were nominated by an award tonight, but then again, I said “album”, so clearly I’m not the target market. I listen to a lot of stuff that people less than half my age love…even though I’m pushing 40 I haven’t lost my love of new music, but I look for quality, and it was in short supply in tonight’s show. I’m not surprised, I haven’t enjoyed a VMAs in close to 10 years, but I still watch them if they’re on and nothing else is. And I’ll admit, if I had a choice between listening to Beyonce or Taylor Swift, I’d pick Beyonce in a minute. I think in terms of pop music, she’s the best there currently is, but I’m a rock fan, not a pop fan or a country fan, and in terms of crossover country these days, a watered down pop-country song just ain’t my bag. If I’m gonna listen to country, I kick it old school, a little Hank, Sr., Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, etc.
So, let’s get back on track here….let’s replace the players here. Let’s say instead of Taylor Swift winning the award it was the abysmally awful Lady Gaga who won an award, and one of the other nominees was Prince. OK, it would be kind of like in ‘88 when the best metal grammy went to Jethro Tull instead of Metallica. It would be stupid, it would be complete cognitive dissonance, it would be enough to piss me off. But I’d say to myself, OK self…remember, this is a popularity contest. What is good is rarely what is popular (anyone who saw the telecast tonight should be able to see that).
So, in this case, everyone who is not part of the MTV crowd these days would realize how stupid that award was, but we’d probably not give it another thought, but if we did, we’d bitch to our friends, we’d write on blogs, we’d post on Fluther, we’d talk to our spouses or significant others. Kanye on the other hand is a public figure….he’s surely got a twitter account, a Facebook, a Myspace, and he’ll probably be interviewed in the press some time soon. He’ll have the floor if he wants the floor, it’s part of being FAMOUS.
I can kind of understand when he first became popular and broke into others’ speeches to bitch about why he didn’t win the award….he’s 100% full of himself, and he’s proud of what he’s created, and doesn’t feel that what beat him is as high quality as his output, he’s emotional, and apparently no one ever told him the world doesn’t revolve around him. Hurt feelings can make people do stupid things. But to go up on stage to decry that the public opinion didn’t match yours, that’s fucking insane.
In other words, he’s basically saying that what was most popular with the judges was wrong, which is fair, he’s entitled to his opinion, but he’s basically coming out on their turf and saying “my opinion is more important than yours”. Until MTV appoints him the judge of the VMAs, his opinion is irrelevant. Someone may care about what he has to say, and if they do, he’s got a way to communicate it. But to go up and do what he did indicates this whole “I’m better than y’all” attitude. By what authority was he acting? Anyone who does whatever they want, whenever they want because they want to is in short an arrogant prick.
And Beyonce has real class, btw, inviting Taylor up to have her moment was so appropriate, I have a new found respect for her as a person. And I honestly don’t think this one was a stunt, I think it was his ego that made him think his opinion is so important that everything can just stop so he can express it. I don’t think this was a stunt, did you see Taylor’s face…she looked positively devastated. It was downright mean spirited what he did….his opinion was more important that letting this 19 year old girl have her moment in the sun.
To be honest, I thought Kanye’s first two albums were groundbreaking, his more recent work sucks, is completely derivative of everything else out there and is no better than what Taylor Swift puts out. But putting out two great albums, or even if he were a true musical genius who did something new and original with every new album, it doesn’t mean that the world should come to an end when he has an opinion to express. If he lost some fans over this (and judging from the crowd’s reaction, he may well have), I have no sympathy for the guy. He deals in a fickle trade, and if he wants to succeed ultimately, he still needs to be a decent person (or at least make it seem to the unwashed masses that he is).
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