Some Brief Thoughts On The 2004 MTV Video Music Awards

I thought that this year's VMAs was lackluster. Instead of using a new backdrop to be more creative, they used it to be less creative.

First off, it had no host. That's not always a bad thing, as other award shows have proven. However, for this one it served to make things kind of boring. I missed Chris Rock's hilarious skewering of the celebrities in attendance, Jimmy Fallon's morphing into every major star, Jamie Foxx's clever use of the video screens, and Shawn and Marlon Wayans' hilariously vicious sketches.

The performances were okay, but nothing groundbreaking. Alicia Keys put in another great performance with special guests Stevie Wonder and Lenny Kravitz. Kanye West also did very well with a nice medley of his hits, ending with Chaka Khan singing her song "Through The Fire" before Kanye went into his song "Through The Wire," which sampled her song. The Polyphonic Spree put on a fun, strange performance. Usher's opening performance was so-so, as his recent performances have been. OutKast's show-ending performance was good, and it was nice to see "Prototype" and "Ghetto Musick" performed live, even for such a short time. Nelly and Christina Aguilera had a nice performance as well. However, I disliked the two "compressed" performances. Not necessarily because they were bad, but because they were incredibly lazy on MTV's part. They stuck four hip-hop performances (Lil' Jon & The Eastside Boyz w/Ying-Yang Twinz, Ying Yang Twinz by themselves, Petey Pablo, and Terror Squad w/Fat Joe) into one and three rock performances (Jet, Yellowcard, and Hoobastank) into one. Many of those people could have easily rocked single performances. As good as some of these performances were, none of them were really memorable. There was nothing like Beyonce coming in from the ceiling, Kid Rock performing with a choir, Run DMC, and Aerosmith, or even anything like Blink 182's performance of "All The Small Things" featuring a whole bunch of little people. That's sad.

Also, a lot of other little things made this show not as good as recent years:

-The lack of black nominees for Viewer's Choice. It's not really MTV's fault exactly (after all, the "viewers" are the ones who narrowed down the nominees), but they realized how that looked enough to have Rev. Al Sharpton make a joke about it during Jon Stewart's bits about the Viewer's Choice award.

-The tape delay. Boy, MTV is still paranoid after the Super Bowl incident. Maybe that's the reason why all the flavor and spontaneity was lost in this year's show.

-The technical difficulties. Apparently, MTV can only find good crews in New York and LA.

-The post-show that wasn't. Yes, the show went over by more than 20 minutes. However, was it really that important to make sure the reshowing started on time? I think the MTV of yesteryear would have bit the bullet and given a post-show regardless of going over.

All in all, this was easily the least enjoyable of the VMAs I've seen over the past few years. Hopefully, MTV will do it right next year.