EXCITEMENT ALERT: MTV VMA 2010 Nominations are in

I'm not going to lose the run of myself and rant on about how OBSESSED I am with the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAS) but suffice to say they are one of my favourite pop culture events of any given year. Last year's ceremony in particular was great stuff. Plenty of big performances, lots of great videos winning it was a perfect storm of a great year for both big music videos and big popstars making for one endlessly enjoyable awards show.

With that in mind it's fun to look through the list of nominations today. Lady Gaga is clearing slaying the competition already with her record breaking 13 nominations, Florence and the Machine have managed to sneak into the Video of the Year category (I'm not sure how given that all of her videos have been a bit blah) and the new artist category should be an interesting mud slinging between Ke$ha and Nicki Minaj and Jason Derulo and Justin Bieber while Broken Bells look on somewhat bemused to be in their category.

It's a neat reminder of how big music videos have gotten again that there are plenty of heavy hitters across the nominations. Obviously Gaga's Telephone and Bad Romance have eaten up online attention the last 12 months but Eminem, Jay Z and B.O.B. are likely to offer up some competition too. The full list, which is exhaustive, can be found here. It's well worth a look not leats for the non award show technical categories which are a neat reminder of the level of work that goes into these productions.

In the mean time I await the full show with baited breath. SO. EXCITED. The official site is pretty kick ass too. I'm actually feeling faint just looking at it. In a good way.

The Meteors 2010: Hanging Out Backstage and Such

I was lucky enough to get to head along to the Meteor Ireland Music Awards last Friday. It's hard to believe the show is now in it's 10th (!) year but there you go. It's fast become a key part of the Irish music calendar attracting lots of press and international stars. This year's heavy hitter was no doubt Florence and the Machine. Everybody was talking about her, in the backstage media area she made many stop and gawk while she rehearsed her soundcheck. She looked like a knock out too. The Temper Trap, Dizzee Rascal, Pixie Lott, The Script were all there too.





Thanks to IMTV I got to head down to the show and do some interviews and help the team out in nabbing as many celeb interviews as possible. The Orange Carpet was actually great fun. It was a tad stressful but I did like how polite everyone was. There was none of the shoving/elbow in the face drama I had been expecting! 


It was a bit weird seeing the array of local and international celebs (of varying degrees of fame) in the flesh. Many of them looked better than on the telly. I'm not going to go into the who looked best in what when it was covered with such wit on Stylebitches but I will say this: Grainne Seoige looked HOT. That is all.


The media room was totally different though, at times a bit of a nuthouse. Lots of "PIXIE ONLY HAS TWO INTERVIEWS SCHEDULED, PLEASE STEP AWAY" moments (I'm of course exaggerating, I don't envy PRs and their ridiculously tough jobs at all) and then loads of people who'd happily amble over for a chat. Wallis Bird was a good example, a real sweetheart and in obvious shock about having won again. 


I really enjoyed it I must say. The lovely Helen O' Reilly nabbed some interviews with the likes of The Coronas, Bell X1 and Una Healy of the Saturdays (at one point I thought they were going to go to the bathroom and do their makeup together, they were getting along that well!). Katie Smyth of Limehouse magazine, who is doing presenting work with IMTV, was hilarious too check out her interviews when they go up, she had me in stitches.


I was lucky enough to do some interviews too, starting off with Katherine Lynch on the Orange Carpet who I made a complete tool of myself in front of. Honestly, I thought I'd peaked when I started singing S Club 7 before the celebs arrived (I'm. Not . Joking) but that interview was even worse. Following that I had a chat with a few others. 


Ray Foley of Today FM, who won his category AGAIN (nice one) who was very sweet and seemed a bit nervous. 


Mark Feehily of Westlife was very polite but kept saying things and looking off into the middle distance. I.e. "Well, I would say to Jedward and them to just enjoy it because it went awful fast for us and we didn't really get to enjoy it like .." *middle distance gaze* I kept thinking I was going to have to pat him on the shoulder. It was odd.


Inside the interview bunker (as I've now christened it) I grabbed some face time with Michelle Heaton who was actually very nice. She came across like a real grafter and she obviously missed her days with Liberty X. Alphabeat were very polite and friendly and awfully beautiful (the cheekbones! honestly). Their new album is also AMAZING, just to point out. There was also a hilarious "interview" I did with Louis Walsh and Sinitta who were clearly out for a good time and not really a chat. Sinitta's legs are incredible, that was all I really took away from our brief time together.


There were other classy moments throughout the evening including eating too many mini sandwiches and indulging in antics like this with Blanaid Hennessy:

Overall I had a fantastic night and can't wait for the next one. The show itself was slick and enjoyable and I think all involved should be commended for keeping this show running for so long and with such success. And for not kicking me out for singing S Club on the orange carpet. How nice of them. And for letting me spend my Friday night getting up to this kind of carry on:

The videos will be going up over the course of the next few weeks but you can see the first of the interviews below where I have a natter with Alphabeat about Lady Gaga, DJing and the 90s sounds on their current album:





(photos nicked from Straywave CEO Stephen McCormack's iPhone snaps)

The Brits Chit Chat

Well at this stage the dust is settling on The 30th Annual Brit Awards. Like all big music award shows it's an bloated and slightly lumpy beast but this year did throw up some gems. Check out the full list of winners here, some nice choices. JLS winning might have meant some turned up noses but it's a fair marker of their huge popularity with the UK pop audience in the last few months, while Florence and the Machine taking Best British Album for Lungs will assure that the album will have chart legs for months to come. As a big Gaga fan (how surprising) it was genuinely great to see her pick up an award in all of her categories, not least Best International Album. Her genuine emotion during the speech was touching too:







Of course she also performed, an unusual but powerful mix of Telephone on the piano and my personal fave from The Fame Monster, Dance In The Dark. A stark, moody performance dedicated to Alexander McQueen it offers up some juicy hints at what to expect from The Monster Ball when it rolls into Dublin this weekend (excitement!). Of all the other performances and moments there were a few I found interesting.


The Spice Girls winning for most memorable performance was sort of a token award that didn't mean a whole lot but the whole thing was funny. Sam Fox making a tit of herself (what else is new) and Geri and Mel B turning up to split the award. Mel is great, charming and funny and obviously glad to be there. And that hair works way better on her than it should! Geri on the other hand seems a bit blah on the whole thing. I love the bit where she goes to take the mic off Mel but Mel isn't ready to hand the mic over. Priceless. 





Lily Allen looked amazing and seemed to compliment the perfectly engineered madness on stage quite well. It was a neat reminder of what a year she's had and what a triumph that second album It's Not Me, It's You was, moving her from promising newcomer with huge hits to a bonafide British popstar. The Fear still remains a fantastic pop single, equal parts wistful, angry and utterly utterly catchy.





Dizzee Rascal and Florence and the Machine pulled off their performance of You've Got The Love with aplomb. I wasn't quite sure how this one would work (particularly with awful memories of that lame Beyonce/Outkast "performance together" a few years ago) but overall it really did. Florence was charismatic and effortless, a perfect conduit for the simple but effective staging and inevitable glitter at the close. Dizzee's rap was a nice compliment to the track and their back and forth movement on stage felt like a nice spin on the usual "rapper performers with singer performing the hook" dynamic. And it was certainly more interesting than Jay Z and Alicia Keyes who while perfectly enjoyable failed to top their VMA performance.





Cheryl Cole of course picked up alot of the tabloid coverage today. Truth be told her performance was a perfectly watchable pop romp but one that could have worked better. The different parts were excellent in terms of staging, the Michael Jackson style opening with the white coats and THAT single, the rather effective Show Me Love breakdown and sliding back into the remainder of Fight For This Love. The dancers were on point and visually it worked. But Cheryl herself seemed off. Her vocal seemed to veer from a bad prerecorded vocal and obvious miming to the original track which was confusing. 





And there was a slightly lacklustre air about the way she was hitting some of those moves too which is a shame. The great appeal of Cheryl for so many is that her emotions are always hugely present to what she is doing. It works well on the X Factor where if she's upset she's REALLY upset. If she's proud she's REALLY proud. But when those nerves kick in it makes her REALLY nervous. And the knock on effect is obvious. Of course it won't stop the Cheryl juggernaut from rolling on but you can't help but feel that sometimes when Ms. Cole says she misses her bandmates, she really isn't lying.


Robbie Williams closing the show was alot more fun than I was expecting. It's easy to write the man off but there is a catalogue of amazing pop songs that he brought to life that make him impossible to ever truly dismiss. Angels may have become lambasted as a karoke favourite/wedding song but that's only because it's genuinely great. It remains to be seen whether or not he can truly turn around the general sense of him being past it in the eyes of media types/the general public but this performance is a good start. The performance is in two parts here and here


With that another big music award show out of the way. I'm curious to see how this weekend's Meteor fare in comparison at least!


They won't top that Mel B/Geri golden moment, unless there's an Emma Bunton / Mel C pairing I'm unaware of :

That's the kind of thing I live for when it comes to Awards show. Take note The Oscars.