Awards shows are always dull; full of smug backslapping, cloying sycophancy and hour after hour of watching pointless ornaments being given to fools who barely deserve them, but imagine if all the awards only get shared between a few people?
Well, then you have the Billboard Music Awards. The Billboard Music Awards took place last night in Las Vegas, and to make up for the lack of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears hosting the awards, the Billboard Music Awards organisers struck upon a novel gimmick – they'd give most of the awards directly to Mary J Blige and let the remaining awards get shared out between T.I, Rhianna and a few other people we've never heard of. Why is this a novel gimmick for the Billboard Music Awards organisers to try out? Because Mary J Blige is shit, obviously.
For a while it looked like the Billboard Music Awards were going to be slightly interesting this year. Not for the awards – they're always dished out to whoever does best in the Billboard charts, so even a crosseyed monkey could predict the results – but because frightening new best friends Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were set to fill hosting duties. But any hopes of watching a classic slice of Hilton/ Spears entertainment – including the spectacular finale where Paris Hilton pisses into a taxi from 20ft away while Britney Spears gets her bare vagina out and looks theatrically quizzical like an obscene magician's assistant – were dashed when first Britney Spears backed out, fearing another Kevin Federline joke would send her into another weepy rage and then Paris Hilton quit the awards because of worries over script-quality, possibly because it contained too many long words.
So the Billboard Music Awards went hostless last night, save for the occasional booming voice-only announcement. On the plus side, that meant that the Billboard Music Awards could just concentrate on the music. On the negative side, that also meant that the Billboard Music Awards could just concentrate on the music. Because for Billboard music equals Mary J Blige, and Mary J Blige is rubbish.
That fact seems lost on Billboard, however, and last night Mary J Blige won awards for Hot 100 Airplay Of The Year, Female R&B/hip-hop artist of the year, R&B/hip-hop artist of the year, R&B/hip-hop songs artist of the year, R&B/hip-hop album artist of the year, R&B hip-hop album of the year, R&B/hip-hop song of the year, R&B/hip-hop song airplay of the year and Videoclip of the year. But in case you needed proof of Mary J Blige's innate rubbishness, even more proof than the terrible duet of One she did with Bono earlier in the year that is, she went and said this teeth-clenching display of self-help smugness after winning all those awards:
"I've realised if I don't [love] myself, nobody will. Nobody is going to love me more than I do."
But this is the Billboard Music Awards, where literally an infinite number of awards are handed out. So in addition to Mary J Blige's haul, Carrie Underwood won five Billboard Music Awards, T.I. won five, Chris Brown won three, Rihanna won three, The Fray won two and Nickelback won two. Chances are if you turned up last night as well, someone would have handed you the Hot 100 That's Quite A Nice Watch Here's An Award award at some point, too.
We're not going to tell you what exact Billboard Music Awards each of these artists won, though, because the constant flow of pointless words will make you fall asleep at your desk and you'll get fired and blame us. And, besides, if you've got space in your brain to store information as breathtakingly useless as that you should have a nice sit down with an encyclopedia this afternoon.
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