subject: Kanye West's Return to the VMAs [print this page] If you were awaiting Kanye West's performance at the end of this year's VMAs because you wanted to hear quality music, then you must be living under a rock.
That isn't to say that Kanye West doesn't produce quality music (that point is as yet uncertain), but his performance this year was about last year.
In fact, following the rumors that surfaced on Saturday that Taylor Swift would be singing a song about Kanye West's interruption of her award acceptance speech during last year's VMAs, this year's ceremony was really about the shattered glass from last year's ceremony.
The show's organizers no doubt realized that this show was billed to earn top viewership ratings, relative to last year, in large part because of last year's fiasco.
Kanye knew that as well, which is why he wound up singing a song composed of the lyrics "Let's have a toast for the assholes! Let's have a toast for the scumbags!" That it wound up ending with a, for lack of a better word, bizarre auto-tune was not only a reflection on Kanye but on an entire music industry that's built around the sort of out-put epitomized by the monotony of auto-tune technology.
So, the fans got what they wanted. Taylor Swift was there, sweet as ever, and so was Kanye, acting the part that he's chosen for himself and in which he's thrived. And not only did he play that part yet again tonight, he actually asked for people to say a toast for him.
So much for his remorse-filled twitter posts during the past few days about the incident with Taylor Swift.
Of course, none of that's surprising given that his performance followed none other than Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" winning best video. For a performer whose career is based exclusively on feigning and behaving in the most ridiculous ways possible, she manages to be extremely successful.
The same could easily be said of Kanye, who walked off the stage to the sound of his name being chanted.
Alas, performance art simply isn't what it used to be.
