Go back to 1997, when this classic pop song came out. Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” is an awesome song—despite the boring music video. Well, I think the music video is boring. It did win Best Alternative Video at the 1998 VMAs.
This song is a classic. There’s not much to say about it. The mellow tone, acoustic sounds, and meaningful lyrics will keep this song around for quiet a long time.
I feel like at least half of the performances at the VMAs involved opening the gates and unleashing a flood of teenagers. I suppose it does make it feel more exciting. As promised, here are some additional comments about the VMAs.
Paramore gave a good performance (link). Paramore is legit. I know ‘legit’ is seemingly a trendy teen word that does not actually mean anything, but in this case, I think it applies. Paramore gives a good show without actually doing any dancing. The girl just jumps around and acts excited while she sings. While I wouldn’t expect this style to make for a great show, it does. Maybe the music helps. MTV calls Paramore ‘powerpop’, which seems a bit odd to me. I call it Fall Out Boy goes female with a touch more pop and rock instead of alternative. “Misery Business” is an excellent song.
Someone named Christina Aguilera did a bit of poorly adjusted “Genie in a Bottle”, meant to be ‘modern’ but really just seemed cliché, followed by a surprisingly good mainstream club-style song (link). I was shocked. For those of you who gave up on Christina Aguilera years ago (or, like me, decided to pretend she did not exist), she went on this whole thing where she changed her image constantly in an effort to appear mature. She dabbled in a lot of different styles of music. Finally, she has caved and hopped in the current flow of pop.
Finally, I would like to thank Jordin Sparks for defending abstinence. Russell Brand, who co-hosted with Britney Spears, repeatedly brought up the Jonas Brothers and their purity rings and constantly made fun of them for it. I found Brand to be generally obnoxious, though occasionally funny.
Look forward to next week’s special, Playlist 13: YouTube Edition! All 13 songs will be available as a playlist on YouTube. I would have done that before, but most songs published legally on YouTube are music videos, and not every song has a music video. I’ve been compiling a large list of music videos available for use over the last couple weeks.
The 2008 Video Music Awards show was a night to remember. The hottest names in music (except Aly & AJ, who are continuously left out at major award shows) performed: Rhianna, Jonas Brothers, P!nk, T.I. (eww, gross, rap, don’t get me started), and Katy Perry.
Katy Perry was, well, Katy Perry (her performance). She wore an outfit similar to the outfits she usually wears when she sings “I Kissed a Girl”, and she didn’t really do anything special other than sing a song that has taken the world by storm. At least, I don’t think she did anything special: something happened and there was only a small bit of Katy Perry’s performance aired from what I have heard. I missed her perform anyway and had to watch it on MTV’s website, where only the final 30 seconds are available.
T.I. performed. I vomited.
P!nk’s performance was amazing (link). It was intense. It was rebellious. It was sexy. The outfits were excellent, the choreography was exciting, the song is great, and P!nk is awesome.
The Jonas Brothers had an interesting performance (link). Nothing spectacular, but the part where the teenage girls were let loose was hilarious. If you haven’t watched the performance, when the song picks up, the scenery changes and a flood of teens comes charging to see the Jonas Brothers. It’s interesting.
Rounding off tonight’s digest is Rhianna. “Disturbia” was by far the best performance of the night (link). P!nk was excellent. Rhianna blew everyone else out of the water. Plus, the performance managed to creep me out to a further extent than the actual music video did. Surprising.
Don’t worry, I know there’s still more for me to cover, and I have my reasons for withholding my final review (for one, I want to get something out quickly before I go to bed, plus I have a song review to go along with one of the remaining performances). Watch for it Monday morning! And I appologize for not having any videos embedded, once again, MTV’s videos don’t want to cooperate. Pity.
It’s the way you love me
It’s a feeling like this
It’s centrifugal motion
It’s perpetual bliss
Faith Hill’s “This Kiss”, a 1998 hit. Not exactly a surprising choice I suppose, as this song still receives good playtime on the radio. But for those of you who listen mostly to the songs currently on the Hot 100, you may have forgotten this one. It’s a good one. And here it is.
It’s a keeper! Beautiful lyrics, excellent vocals. Definitely worthy of a quick rewind to ten years ago. Plus, she says “centrifugal motion”. Everyone loves a smart blonde. Just look at Colonel Carter.
Last night, ABC, NBC, and CBS held a fundraiser for cancer research. During the show, 13 women performed the song. In the downloadable version of the song on iTunes, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, and LeAnn Rimes sing, but they were replaced for the performance.
I thought it was a decent performance. Not particularly exciting, but still, it was good. Carrie Underwood was definitely my personal favorite. Miley’s little dance move and “singing” was hilarious. Was her solo really even singing?
Who was your favorite? What did you think of the performance? Leave some comments 
I am predicting a YouTube first will occur today. I have been tracking Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” video, and based on the last two weeks, today should be the day when “Girlfriend” becomes the world’s first video to receive more than 100,000,000 views on YouTube.
For those of you who don’t already know, there was a bit of controversy surrounding the video’s views. An Avril Lavigne fansite created a YouTube viewer, which would refresh the video every 15 seconds and claimed that it would help Avril top the YouTube charts. The entertainment world exploded: Perez Hilton, Entertainment Weekly, and other major entertainment outlets reported that this group of fans was bombarding YouTube with views of “Girlfriend”. In reality, only 200 views per person are counted per day, meaning the fansite was not directly responsible for millions of views. In fact, it was the rest of the entertainment world’s yelling about the supposed cheating that brought in so many views. And today, those views will top 100,000,000.
Yesterday’s Rewind was so much fun that I decided to try it again! For those of you who watch closely, I ended the last Rewind with “c’est la vie”. When I wrote that, I never thought that my next Rewind could be about just that. “C’est La Vie” by B*Wtiched! Here it is!
This 1999 hit is simply smashing! They do say smashing in Ireland don’t they? Well, B*Witched, an Irish group, took the world by storm with their fun bubblegum-esque pop. Today, almost everyone has heard this song, and for good reason. These Irish gals put together one incredible song. The music video is really cute, the lyrics are marginally meaningful, and honestly, who doesn’t hum “Say you will, say you wont” every once in a while? Have fun singing this song to yourself for the rest of the day, it’s absurdly addictive.
Oh, I know, I’m such a dork, but I have fallen in love with Twitter. It seems really stupid, but Twittering is so fun! Check it out!
I’d love to tweet with y’all if you have a Twitter!
For those of you without Twitter… You are missing out. I will be putting up content only available on Twitter—mostly because I want each blog post (with a few exceptions) to be meaningful, and my tweets will be more entertaining. I’ll try my best to keep my Twitter music-oriented, but with a more personal spin on it. Whether it’s my new obsession with Selena Gomez or another blogger’s interesting post, it will be on Twitter.
Now, go follow me!
I went looking for a song that I could pull up from a while ago, but nothing seemed appropriate. I wanted something funny. Then it hit me: Disney’s failed attempt to turn Aaron Carter into a pop icon!
Now, don’t get me wrong. If you watch the video (which might not actually work, I’ve had a bit of trouble embedding Yahoo! Music videos lately, but you can see the video on YouTube here), you might think, “this boy has talent!” And he did. Why did he fail? Who knows, but nobody has wanted to get near him for years, and when now that Blake Lewis, the season 6 runner up on American Idol, has been spotted with him, the blogosphere seems to have decided: Blake Lewis is done.
The song and video are both fun. Aaron’s got some nice dance moves. I’m not sure I buy the premise of the video—he looks no older than eleven and throws a house party—but still, when I was in fifth grade, this song was a hit. I loved it. My friends loved it. We played it at parties. The pop-with-a-hint-of-rap thing worked. For a bit. And then Aaron Carter disapeared, and eventually came out with a flop of a record that nobody bothered to listen to. Oh well, c’est la vie.
