Smallscreen News

MTV Awards killed the Radio Star, Rihanna drama trumps winners, some thoughts

By April MacIntyre Sep 8, 2012, 18:10 GMT

Rihanna - this generation\'s Tina Turner © Emiley Schweich / PR Photos

MTV heralded a new age of visual artistry and notoriety for musicians who were once discovered by A&R men, nurtured by labels and sent on long tours to sell albums.

Those days of promoters each having a territory - Don Law in Boston, Louis Messina in Houston and Bill Graham in San Francisco - are long gone.

Corporations fully run the show, and technology has killed the old model for bands to break big. Even the flamboyant music agents of days long past are replaced by privileged law students who do the perfunctory agency mail room climb to power and parlay.

Which brings us to award shows for music, specifically the MTV video awards. The event is little more than a rehash of the last, and features the usual suspects, peppered with drama from this generation's Tina Turner - Rihanna - who was tuned up to a bloody mess the night of the Grammys a few years back by her then boyfriend Chris Brown in a rented Lamborghini.

Everything old is new again as Chris Brown's Rihanna kiss last night at the awards has launched a thousand headlines like "Girlfriend Karrueche Tran "Pissed" Over Rihanna VMA Kiss."

Rihanna just can't quit Brown, and it seems the feelings are mutual.

The days of classic rock, Motown, psychedelic, rock ballads, Southern-style rock, the British sound, New Wave and Punk are replaced by music that wanna be Deadmau5 fans can mix and mutilate songs of days past into something that sounds like intergalactic space farts. Sorry, most techno music is soulless and repetitive to the point of madness, and needs the requisite drugs like ecstasy just to enjoy it.

Coldplay takes the prize over the Black Keyes, who have the hot song Gold on the Ceiling, soon to be co-opted to a car commercial I am sure. Meanwhile all over this country there are great bands, singers and musicians who are making it happen locally for themselves, creating their own buzz.

And MTV's relevance for music has all but virtually been replaced by their reality slate.

Meanwhile the only newsworthy item it seems is Rihanna and her moth to flame attraction to Chris Brown, which people lather over both positively and negatively.

Us Magazine reports that Tran, 23, is "totally pissed off" with her beau of nearly a year after he congratulated Rihanna for her Video of the Year win with a big fat kiss.

"She felt the kiss was a public slap in the face," their source says.

Brown, 23, and Rihanna, 24, are rumored to be secretly hooking up. Rihanna all but blamed herself for the beatdown tearfully during a recent Oprah interview.

Us fuels the rumors further: "[Karrueche] and Rihanna really hate one another and Chris ultimately just does what he wants," their source continues. "Seeing him with Rihanna at such a public event made her very angry."