Thursday, January 21, 2010

weighing in a little late here...

So, there was that huge deal a few months ago at the Video Music Awards when Kanye West jumped on stage and ruined Taylor Swift's acceptance speech and all that. At the time I barely knew who Taylor Swift was, watched the clip, saw the poor frightened blond girl and felt bad for her, and was just as outraged as everyone else.

Then a few weeks ago I heard the song on the radio, thought it was fun and upbeat (I have officially gotten over my "I don't listen to pop because it's too popular" phase in life and will now embrace a good song when I hear it), and added it to my gym mix, which is chock full of songs that would cause people to roll their eyes. I figured I should watch the video, so I did.

...

Is it horrible to say that, um, I agree with Kanye? Not that it's ok to interrupt the biggest moment of someone's life to announce that she didn't actually deserve it, but Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video (which is also on my gym mix, by the way) is WAY better than this cheap-looking retread of a video. How many times have you seen this video made before? It's not even well-lit. The whole POINT of music videos is to be fun and stylish and well-lit, not to be a tiny romantic comedy set to music. Yes yes, Taylor Swift is geared towards tweens who probably eat this crap with a spoon, but REALLY. Kanye was right. Beyonce's video should have won. And yes, I know it won the Best Video award or whatever and thus Taylor Swift probably won the Best Video by a Female Artist award just so that it wasn't a complete sweep, but REALLY. I have never been a huge fan of that logic. The same logic states that when a foreign film is the best movie of the year, and is nominated at the Academy Awards for both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture, it cannot win both, even if it deserves both. This is bullshit. If something is that good and happens to be foreign, it should win.

So Kanye West is a jackass, but hey, at least he's not a delusional jackass.