When I was a kid, the Video Music Awards was the most exciting night in modern rock. You never knew which member of Nirvana was gonna get hit in the head with a bass. It was crazy. That was a long time ago, though, back when Arsenio Hall was considered cutting edge and the Real World cast wasn’t drunk. This year Arsenio Hall isn’t even invited! I digress. Mad Men‘s not on for a few hours, so let’s watch this year’s ceremony together. Britney is opening and Kanye is closing (“Love Lockdown”?) and in between, so much sexually charged, self-deprecating humour from Russell Brand awaits. After the jump, an almost-live feed of red carpet arrival photos so you can see what everyone is wearing (“everyone” = actors from The Hills). T-Pain’s elephant has some serious bling.
LIL WAYNE
KATY PERRY
KID ROCK
PETE WENTZ
LINDSAY LOHAN
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
MICHAEL PHELPS
JONAS BROTHERS
ASHLEE SIMPSON
MCLOVIN
ASHLEY TISDALE
AKON
T.I.
DJ AM & TRAVIS BARKER
RIHANNA
CEE-LO
CHRIS BROWN
TILA TEQUILA
JONATHAN DAVIS
PEREZ HILTON
SUMNER REDSTONE!
T-PAIN
LUPE FIASCO
PLAIN WHITE T’S
TOKIO HOTEL
STEPHANIE PRATT
NE-YO
AUDRINA PARTRIDGE
LAUREN CONRAD
TAYLOR SWIFT
T-PAIN
[Photos by Frederick M. Brown/Getty.]
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I will watch with you. Katy Perry is such an annoying poseur asshole.
Michael Phelps + Kid Rock. oh jeez.
Ok maybe it’s me? But T-pain is absolutely repulsive!!! I can’t take it anymore this needed to be said. (sorry fan sof…..)
Katy Perry “doesn’t have a lot of money.”
Is Ashlee Simpson having septuplets?
am i missing something? or is tokyo hotel something real?
Rihanna covered Seven Nation Army?
for real, what was that? was that like, allowed?
wtf is going on with MTV? this hall looks like my own room…
but russel brand rules. he disses george, john etc.
“Wear a condom or become a republican”
And the Jonas Brothers remarks were good, too.
Political humor from Russell Brand, i don’t think the audience likes it
russell brand owns and rules.
Britney gave up two children and won a VMA
wow, i think i actually know who just about 5 of those people are. also, this was not a good year in fashion. not at all.
Seriously, no liveblogging from you guys this year? All the liveblogging I’m reading is from people who either hate pop music or don’t get Russell Brand. Poo!
I’ve finally realized what the problem of this show/of mtv is. Only the teenagers watch MTV today. I remember back in the days – when actually there weresome music videos on the channel (in the early 90′s) everyone from 14-40 watched MTV. now it’s only 14-16. I mean… seriously: look at the categories, the winners. no one over 18 listen to these things. mtv has completely lost track.
Hey everybody — If you were wondering, Russell said “penis.” He said his “penis” had never been more moisturized.
This is the most entertaining vma in years. No one knows what the fuck is going on or where to go and or what to say. Each mistake is better than the last. It is seriously like they never did a run through and the real place that they were supposed to have the awards got shut down at the last minute.
Oh yeah and are those rings the jonas brothers wear against gay sex as well?
lol. even the light is bad. it’s not on the center of lohans face.
@Weezy
What’s the point of even wearing pants?
Pussycat Doll: “I wanna thank god for being so awesome to us”
FIRST IDEAS that came to my mind while looking at those pictures:
Jonas Brothers – Two of them try to look like Elvis. Go to school, punks.
McLovin – Coolest guy ever.
Akon – He looks like one of those guys that worked with Paul Simon on “Graceland”.
T.I. – His girlfriend looks like a whore.
Rihanna – Her legs looks hotter on “Umbrella”. One hit wonder, for sureeeee.
Tila Tequila – Oh fuck, not again, the girl that everybody wants to “love”.
Jonathan Davis – Looks Hansome. The guy has style. Soon we’ll see him playing live with the Rock N’ Roll royalty. Mark my words.
Perez Hilton – Stupid dumb ass fucker. Get a life.
Sumner Redstone – Billions :p
Plain White T’s – The guy in the middle looks like some 80′s synth-pop singer on the 1985 VMA’s.
Lauren Conrad – No one in the world cares about you. Stop trying to be “famous”. You have no talent, nothing, you’re useless to society. SPOILED KID.
Crap, you guys make me wish I had cable. What’s Courtney Love doing?!
i have never heard the jonas brothers, but i’m so enthralled with the photos i see of them. never a sleeve left unrolled. seriously, who dresses these guys? it’s like ricky martin’s grandfather banged one of the strokes grandmothers which led to a very dangerous but successful pregnancy. this spawn eventually became a stylist for country bands, was fired, then got the important jonas brothers account.
Conversely, Tokyo Hotel look like if Ann Wilson of Heart fucked 4 Non Blondes . And did Lupe ride a horse to the show?
The chick from Tokio Hotel is hot
Um are “tokyo hotel” CGI characters?
xtina does Deal or No Deal
christ, these VMA’s are terrible…the only good thing, Russell Brand, I now idolize him for the Jonas Bros jokes. and McLovin, I mean who can hate McLovin? He makes up for the lack of actual talent in this show…I’m personally disappointed.
TH MUST DIE. GOD. im sick of that band!
and katy perry always, ALWAYS ALWAYS wears those…idk…what do u call them?rompers?onesies for adults? whatever. they do NOT LOOK GOOD.
im still watching this show though. guilty pleasure. plus host.
i think ive had about enough of katy perry.
and is ashley simpson admitted she’s pregnant yet?
as i suspected nobody knows what the fuck to make of russell brand and i’m still not sure what he’s doing wasting his time there with all those lame-os.
What is Tokio Hotel? How do I not know who most of these people are? Why are the only people I do know from The Hills? (What can I say? It’s a guilty pleasure. I do like LC’s dress, though.)
They’re basically AFI meets The Scoropions. Or just…rubbish.
yeah, that’s my new song. suck it
tokio hotel might be the gayest looking band ever….ever…
I love watching Russell Brand rip on the Jonas Brothers. What losers.
should I feel bad that I don’t know about 70% of the people just shown on these pictures?!
but yeah… christina aguilera, please this is mtv not the wammys. and michael phelps needs some pr person to tell him how to dress or something!
either way, i didn’t watch this nor did i care cause i didnt know/had not heard pretty much anything that was nominated this year! I’m kinda of proud of myself, my mainstream lockdown may be coming full circle sometime soon
Wow, how are the kids (Jonas Brothers) dressed better than the adults? Kids are schooling the adults.
P.S. HAHAH! Phelps look like a penguin, how appropriate.
Holy shit.
I’ve never considered myself a violent man, but I’m having trouble deciding which member of Tokyo Hotel to strangle first. The one who looks like an anime character would certainly be the funnest, but for that reason I might save him/her/whatever for last.
I’m so terrified that they’re going to become famous to anyone over the age of 13. It happened so quickly with the Jonas Brothers that I didn’t even notice.
Someone needs to call Michael Jackson and tell him that T-Pain stole his jacket. And are unnecessary zippers the new preferred fashion accessory??
Rum: Lupe didn’t ride a horse to the show, he took his scientifically enhanced 1930s biplane after having used it to steal back an ancient treasure from a military base full of Nazis.
But seriously, TOKYO HOTEL!!!
I just can’t get over the horror. I’m never going to get that image out of my head.
i don’t know who the fuck half these people are- but why Michael Phelps? i want to just kind of kick all the jonas brothers in the face- or like make Bob Mould do it. I actually really respect T.I. too. I don’t even really like hip-hop but at least he’s like real. sort of. and why the fuck does Kid Rock have to be there? Why has he ever the slightest bit popular?
I really have lost touch with the youth demographic. This is just insane. It is depressing.
also, it’s a weird world where ‘lil wayne is the most low key person on the red carpet.
I think that this years show was very unorganized and very trashy…. no one knew what the hell was going on.
And a HUGE FUCK YOU to all of the people talking shit about Tokio Hotel, they deserved their win and they should have gotten the Best Pop award as well. Those guys have more talent than anyone in that fucking show.
I think that this years show was very unorganized and very trashy…. no one knew what the hell was going on.
And a HUGE FUCK YOU to all of the people talking shit about Tokio Hotel, they deserved their win and they should have gotten the Best Pop award as well. Those guys have more talent than anyone in that fucking show.
OK MEGAN OK!
I GET IT!
TOKIO HOTEL IS LIKE A JAPANESE POP CULTURE JOKE TEAM.
One member is a white guy/girl trying to be black.
One member is a white guy/girl trying to be Japanese.
One member is a white guy/girl.
One member is a white douche bag squared.
Did i get it? No, they’re actually a band. LAWL!!!
Damn. Tokio Hotel is looking might fine.
Bill’s sense of style. What can I say? It get’s better EVERY day.
Tom and his seductive look? Jeezus. I didn’t know a guy could GET that hot.
Oh wait. There’s Georg. He looks so sexy in that black jacket holy.SHIT.
Gustav and his Muff Diver shirt. LOL. that’s amazing <33
Those 4 boys have so much talent it will blow your little hater minds away. So please shut the fuck up and just respect the guys for making music that’s so amazing you with your close minded brain are probably never going to undrestand.
Congrats to you guys for winning Best New Artist.
Tokio Hotel= Super gay. Their music is shit and people who enjoy it blow my mind.
Ha, I see Tokio Hotel has finally crossed over to the States. I’m living in Prague and they are HUGE over here (for the tween crowd). It took me like 3 months to realize Bill (the one with Fraggle hair) is actually a boy!
Did anyone else find Jordin Sparks to be incredibly annoying? Someone needs to learn how to take a joke. Poor John Legend looked like Mike Myers did when Kanye pulled the, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” thing.
Jesus, scrolling down those photos was the most depressing 30 seconds of the day.
What a bunch of fucking degenerates.
i can’t believe any of these people actually make music
Taylor Swift is at least talented..I am not sure about the rest of these jokers…
Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz are actually kinda cute. Oh shoot me.
It was all worth it for the smile I got from the McLovin picture. Why would somebody roll their suit jacket sleeves up? And what is worse they roll their dress shirt on top of that. I really hate the Jonas brothers from a fellow member of society point of view. Haven’t had the blessing of hearing their music yet.
Who’s out of touch here… MTV or the rest of us? Because pretty much everyone posting here is asking “who the fuck are these people” and I’d think that the average Stereogum commenter is more “in touch” with music than maybe any old Joe on the street.
I watched 15 minutes of this last night and felt like I was watching some Nickelodeon Mickey Mouse awards show or something. Are we all just a bunch of old codgers or has MTV completely lost all relevance? Isn’t music relevance supposed to be their job?
And WTF… did anyone see the videos that were up for video of the year? They were all just regular old normal “here we are playing our song” videos. There was nothing innovate or even marginally creative about any of them.
this year’s vma’s made me feel incredibly old. i did find the paradox of the typical MTV sexed up performances vs. the squeaky clean promise ring tween crowd pretty entertaining. C’mon tweeners–use it or lose it! Thank you Russell Brand for giving these modern day Osmond Jonas Brothers the treatment they deserve.
mtv stopped being about music a lot of time ago… now mtv is about reality tv and occasional music listeners… so that applies to their annual award ceremony… I don’t know why or how exactly this happened… maybe they changed staff and they changed the concept of the channel…
need whiskey and shrooms to clear out my brain after seeing all those douchey pix
Tokio Hotel is actually fun in a turn-off-your-brain kind of way. Then again, I remember hearing them for the first time when I was in Europe three years ago when they were basically little kids doing post-grunge music, with the lyrics all in German, and the singer had a little angry-chipmunk voice. It was fucking adorable. Less adorable now that they’re growing up and singing trite English translations of the same songs, I guess.
Is it weird that through all that awesomely bad fashion I feel most embarrased for Perez?
i’m not a communist or anything, but isn’t michael phelps one seriously ugly motherfucker?
Half of you’s are jelous
wnnabee;s ?
why critizise them, they got somewere with there life,
wether it was for reasons or not,
PS: i love chris brown
Wannabe rihanna maybe
Is saying you ‘get’ Russell Brandt the new way to get blog cred? “Nobody gets him, but me!” It’s like those people a few years ago that kept telling you that the BBC Office was SO much better than the NBC version.
I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. I want to, really I do, but 5 minutes about how Americans need to vote for Obama and ha ha about W? Unoriginal, predictable and unfunny. And I’m sorry, the Jonas Brothers jokes just seemed in poor taste. Make fun of Brittany, or Rihanna’s outfit, or how gawdawful the VMAs are. At the very least, don’t apologize later about the promise ring stuff. Whatever.
He came off like a British guy who just shows up at a party 2 days into his American vacay desperately trying to get the Yanks to laugh at him. “Listen to my bloody accent! What do you fffink about it?”
Simmi, you are exactly the demographic MTV is looking for. Keep on watching.
I’m guessing he was forced to retract the jokes about the promise rings because it offended people like Jordin Sparks. Y’know, cause everyone who has sex is a slut and all. Seriously though, he was right to poke fun at them. Promise rings are a joke and more about being seen wearing them then actually following through on the commitment. It’s a PR gimmick to give them that warm, cuddly feeling for Disney to exploit. Give it another two to three years and I’m sure we’ll hear all about the Jonas Brothers nailing young Hollywood starlets. Look no further than Britney for that career trajectory.
lindsay lohan looks like a 35 year old sopranos esque new jersey mafia mom…ha. i wonder if one of the jonas’s got with her.
Why does the portly guy in Plain White T’s (far right) look like the prototype of every portly douche bag in the US?
Is Tokyo Hotel the reformed Menudo?
Fuck rap, emo and all that Z100 crap. I don’t know half those people!
Ok, everyone keeps talking about how Mtv is playing shit but no on is doing anything.
We grew up and stopped watching. Stopped voting. Did you even know that you can write in votes for a video to be nominated for the VMA’s on their website? Or for TRL? Did you notice that for best female video on their website they gave you an option to nominate Bjork for Best Female Video with Declare Independence and Wanderlust? Or that MTV did a 10Spot world premier of Galang by M.I.A. in the Summer of ’04? But we aren’t watching or voting.
Our generation in America doesn’t vote. IE Bush/Cheney 04
katy perry’s tiddies are fantabulous. everytone else, not so much.
could someone please stab Perez Hilton in the neck, and get it over with. thanks in advance.
What a collection of useless assholes.
Does anyone else think that Chris Browns shoes look like the ones Michael J Fox wore in the back to the future II.
Fuck the kids
AMEN! End of story.
who the hell are these people`?
i would like to have sex with ashley tisdale. i think that would be nice.
Have Stephanie Pratt and Amanda Bynes ever been photographed together?
How long have those annoying ads for the Plain White T’s online series been running on this site? A little while right?
Because they’re dressed the same way on this magnificent red carpet. Oh well. . .
HAT ZIPPERS!!! How extravagant, T-Pain.
i would do lil wayne, i won’t lie.
I thought MTV could afford to have real celebrities on their shows… This is just a group of D-List celebrities… Unless I’m just clueless because I haven’t been following radio pop since the 90s…
those were the worst hours of television ever. next time i’d rather watch snails crawl across my lawn. I luckily tivo’d it and the little bits that i saw were enough to make me angry, sad, and then nauseous. it looked cheap, all were Z-list celebs, the live acts were atrocious and those Jonas brothers deserve to be neutered. please please let this MTVs swan song…it needs to go away forever.
They got on this a bit late, but I think HuffPost had the last word:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-notte/the-vmas-need-to-call-it_b_125193.html
As i scrolled down those pictures, the screaming in my head got louder.
lmao … that “chick” in tokio hotel is totally a dude,,, androgyny is hawt and hella funny
The Jonas Brothers look like they’re there to sell coke to everyone. That might explain their popularity.
Oh, and Rihanna was looking FINE!
michael phelps needs a better stylist for the amount of press he gets.
katy perry, good god. shoot me
also, I am going to make it my mission to get the jonas brothers in bed
one of them, maybe the one on th left.. the one on the right is just heinous looking. and the one in the middle, I’m guessing he’s the baby..
but anyway, it would both fulfill my childhood fantasies about hanson and make them look like twerps for the promise rings.
okay
i dont think the dude in tokio hotel is actually that retarded, hes just preparing for his roll in the dragonball movie
omg its the celeberties heeeeeeeeeheeeeeehheeeeee dough
the best part of the VMA’s was Kanye West’s performance at the end… the worst part was the host (what’s with the accent?)
I think the only best dressed one there was Jonathan Davis from KoRn. Gah!!! What has the VMA’s come too??? It sucks!