It's the end of the year, which means that at any given moment someone is being handed an award for something–because, you know, it's the end of the year, and there's all this airtime to fill, and people like awards shows, right?
Well, that's not exactly true. People don't like the actual awards shows nearly as much as they like criticizing and making fun of awards shows with a group of people. But while the big, significant awards shows (like the Oscars) or the big awards shows that think they're significant (The Golden Globes) are endlessly ridiculed and scrutinized, there are more than a few smaller, completely pointless, and totally insignificant awards shows that fall through the cracks of public ridicule and scorn each year.
Well, no more! Welcome once again to Award Shows You Didn't Know (Or Care) Existed, a feature that seeks out the less significant awards shows and holds them up for the public ridicule they so richly deserve.
Today's selection: Last night's American Music Awards, the award show that dares to ask, "How pointy can we make our nothingness?" (The answer, incidentally, is so, so pointy.)
The American Music Awards are handed out to the artists, songs, and records that sell really well and are played on the radio most often. (Except for the T-mobile breakthrough artist award, which is presumably given to the artist who most embodies the T-mobile spirit and/or sells the most fake iPhones. Good work, whatever Gloriana is!) It's literally a popularity contest—which is fine, but clearly deeply unnecessary. You would think that being at the top of the sound scan chart and piped in through the speakers of supermarket sound systems throughout the country at regular intervals would be reward enough. But you'd be wrong. According to the American Music Awards, Taylor Swift needs to be given five clear, pointy reminders of just how popular her particular brand of romeo & juliet white horse band geek true love unicorn nice fairy tale blandness is.
After all, what else is she going to use to impale her enemies? You belong with her, America, being smothered by her not-quite-pop-not-quite-country-not-quite-anything-but-marshmallow-fluff blandness.
So, basically, the American Music Awards exist in order to ensure that every song you hear more than four times on the radio can be classified as an award-winning song. But the American Music Awards show exists for four reasons:
1. To promote ABC's stable of stars.
2. To bombard you with bored Janet Jackson medleys and sludgy Black Eyed Peas perform-a-splosions, then blind you with Rihanna's laser jacket.
3. To canonize St. Whitney Houston.
4. To give a lipsynching, non-Louboutin-wearing, former fly-girl a really big stage on which to fall down. (In more ways than one. Zing.)
For that last reason, and only that last reason, the American Music Awards show is sort of useful.