My Wrap on the AMAs

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Lots of double winners at American Music Awards

Everyone's going to have their own take on the AMAs, but here's mine:

1) Lindsay Lohan should either stick to the studio where they can electronically treat her voice as they have done in the past, take some vocal lessons or forget about singing all together. She sounded absolutely awful. Only the backup singers covering up her singing made her performance not actually physically painful. She missed most of the notes and her stage presence really could use some work.

2) Hilary Duff looked great and sounded good, but really needs to have a song with more lyrics than just the single line: "The beat of my heart." Honestly I was tired of the song after 30 seconds.

3) Kenny Chesney lost out on Male Country Singer to Tim McGraw after losing out in the CMAs to Keith Urban. If he doesn't think this is related to his marriage problems with Renee Zellweger, then he really doesn't know anything about country music fans. I said a couple of months that his career would pay a price because country music fans take marriage seriously and Kenny evidently did not. It's too bad because if he had then I guarantee he would have been on the podium for both the CMAs and the AMAs.

4) If you're going to feature Gwen Stefani as a performer, either let her have her own time or give her more than one line to repeat over and over again during Pharrell's performance. It was like they needed a place to stick her, so they could tout her performance in the ads promoting the show. It certainly wasn't the kind of performance that her fans had a right to expect.

5) It was definitely country music's year at the AMAs with Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, and Keith Urban performing and Sugarland taking the New Artist award. It's a growing part of the music scene, and if you still think country music is about hound dogs and sad drinking songs then you haven't been paying attention.

6) The rap music on display was terrible. I've heard better raps from street kids backed up by nothing more than their buddy beat-boxing. Rap only becomes music when the rhymes actually meet up with the rhythm: otherwise it's just bad grammar school poetry. Run DMC? Hardly...More like Run Away....

7) Cedric the Entertainer was not entertaining. I hope they don't make the mistake of asking him back. Hosting isn't an easy task, but it was evident that he's not really cut out for the job.

8) What was up with Katherine Heigl wearing the overcoat on stage? Yes, I know it was part of the outfit, but if your dress doesn't look good without the overcoat it's time for a new fashion choice.

9) Favorite couples of the evening: Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith of course. I liked his attempt to be subtle about the "negativity" in rap: it wasn't subtle but I'm glad he made the point, and Jada - as always - looked incredible. (Tim McGraw also made a subtle dig at the "thug" mentality of too many rappers when he pointed out that he was glad to be a part of country music where the performers showed respect for each other.) Dave Navarro and Carmen Electra having their anniversary moment when they came on to present was nice too.

10) Mariah Carey...Mariah, Mariah, Mariah...someone needs to help her with her fashion choices. She's not the waif she was when she first hit the music scene and trying to squeeze into a dress that's too small isn't an attractive sight. Also, try to wear a bra next time Mariah. I could elaborate, but let's just say that some women look better without them and some women look better with them, and Mariah's one of the latter.

11) The Rolling Stones and The Eurythmics...For a show that's trying to appeal to the 20-somethings, could they have dug any deeper into the past for your show topping acts? You can't be "hip" and "cool" and trot these folks out. Annie Lennox was over the top with her performance - her voice is still great, but it was obvious she was trying too hard and their target audience was on the grade school playground when those songs were hits. And the Rolling Stones? Someone needs to roll them away and let them gather some moss for a change. They may still be touring but they haven't hit the charts in a long, long time. Their fan base is their age. I don't think there are many dorm rooms around the country with Mick Jagger adorning the walls...As a side note, and it's not their fault, but the sound quality was so bad that the performance was barely audible so that didn't help either...

And that's what I think about that...