Bread and Circus at the 2006 Billboard Music Awards.
Spectacle trumped talent at the 2006 Billboard Music Awards. During several of the early musical numbers, supersized confetti spewed from modified snowmaking machines. Giant candy canes planted around the stage led one to wonder which competitor would nail the slalom event.
Along the sides and back wall of the stage, or upstage, a CGI fever dream pulsated from huge screens. Upstage, indeed. A psychedelic Candyland to delight, amuse and distract. Was the bedazzlement supposed to blind us from the lameness? An over-produced flimflam designed by over-caffeinated set dressers to keep us awake and watching?
Here’s the theory – the lesser gods and goddesses of the pop music pantheon need a little help, a little cover from the pain of a live rendition of their studio-magic recordings.
Take Janet Jackson’s opening number. She started with a shout out to one of her early hits, The Pleasure Principal, to school the youngsters in the audience that she, indeed, was at one time relevant. Jackson proceeded to whisper her way through her new single as she clomped arthritically through an approximation of her tired two-decade-old dance moves.
And the confetti was flying with a vengeance. In case a flurry of confetti the size of postcards wasn’t enough to distract us from the sadness, her backup dancers leapt and spun around the stage like meth-fueled Cirque Du Soleil acrobats.
Young legs executed supernatural street athletics, undeterred by the drifts of colored paper that were beginning to accumulate in piles around the stage. Instead of distracting us from Jackson’s performance, the adolescents only highlighted her geriatric, lame performance. Seriously, she looked lame, like she’d pulled a hamstring.
Then there’s Fergie, rapping in that dated singsong manner like a female Will Smith as she minces around the stage almost in time to the music. Tired rap, forgettable lyrics, confetti explosion!
A pattern is emerging. The worse the performance, the harder the confetti falls. The lights pulse more insistently, commanding attention. Ignore the girl in front of us and bow down to your sparkly, trance-inducing master!
Just as it seems the stage walls will come tumbling down in a frenzied representation of the end of western civilization, a giant Quincy Jones appears on the back screen like a pop music oracle. Control yourselves, oh walls of power, all is not lost!
Jones introduces a quartet of rappers who actually have talent. The walls calm down to bathe each rapper in his own signature color. Hmm…no confetti. Or have supplies simply run out in the face of so much blatant suckitude?
Nascent yodeler Gwen Stefani bounces around the stage, selling her rapping goatherd mash-up. No confetti, she must be talented. Well, she is actually singing and sort of dancing. No comment on the live goat.
The guys who won digital album of the year – no confetti and no background movies. They must be really talented. Well, the lead singer is playing a piano, an actual musical instrument.
Mary J. Blige performs with only a subtle screen of vertical white stripes behind her – a subliminal reference to a now defunct minimalist rock duo? But she is indeed confetti-free. She’d better be, she won nine times!
Now comes Stevie Wonder to introduce Century award winner Tony Bennett. Visually, the quietest screen of the evening, a cascade of calming electric blue. Two legends. No confetti.
As for the other, less gifted performers who appeared tonight, the message seemed clear. They already got your bread, how about a little circus?