It didn't take long before the first annual YouTube Music Awards went completely off the rails. Approximately 15 minutes in, hosts Reggie Watts and Jason Schwartzman delivered the first award of the night to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis with Rashida Jones' crying babies in their arms. It was awkward and bizarre, and that's probably exactly what the powers that be behind the first annual YouTube Music Awards were going for.
After all, for weeks we've been reading pieces about how Spike Jonze and his crew have been creating something that is unlike anything we'd seen before. We were warned that it would be unique, unscripted, and messy - a complete experiment.
What we got was an event that was all over the place in almost every way - from the awards, to the performances, to the winners.
The best starting place is probably the big centerpiece of the show: live music videos. The idea was that the live performances would be actual music videos, directed (or "orchestrated") by actual music video directors like Spike Jonze, Ray Tintori, and Syndrome. This in itself is a really intriguing concept. Over the past few years we've seen live performances on late night television to big awards shows start to look like live adaptations of music videos. What YouTube did for their award show was basically take it one step further, attributing director-like creators to these performances and allowing them to be staged in a more film-like way.
Some of these performances were extremely successful, like the Spike Jonze-directed performance for "Afterlife" by Arcade Fire that opened the show, featuring dancing by Greta Gerwig. Some were virtually indestiguishable from their regular award show counterparts, like Lady Gaga's performance of "Dope" which looked a little more like a teaser for something bigger than the actual thing itself. Eminem's black and white "Rap God" video that closed out the show was probably the performance that looked most like a music video, while Earl Sweatshirt's "Sasquatch" video had the palpable energy of a live performance.
Even though the live music video concept was sometimes very successful, the dichotemy between award show and warehouse performance piece was apparent in almost every element throughtout the show. Even though the event was broadcast on the internet, we still got the obnoxious live editing for languag that pretty much ruined the performance by Earl Sweatshirt. Music videos by artists like Taylor Swift were stacked in categories with YouTube comedy like "Epic Rap Battles of History". Some awards were accepted by artists while some were accepted by people who covered that artist's song on YouTube even though the award was for the artist. It was a confusing night.
And then there were the hosts. Much ado was made about Watts and Schwartzman not having scripts, and it was extremely apparent that they didn't really even have an idea of what they wanted to do once they got started. There were short pieces of the both of them playing musical interludes, but mostly they just bantered aimlessly back and forth, working their way through bizarre set ups like them searching for the winner of a category in several cakes, prompting Watts to say the best line of the night - "this feels like Nickelodeon". These setups also led to what I felt was the most awkward moment of the awards - Watts and Schwartman pulling a sheet off a bin to reveal a young girl who stood up and shouted the winner of an award category.
Technically, the show seemed to work well. It was an ambitious project that wasn't contained to one stage, and it went off with fewer hitches than you might see on usual live football broadcast. The live music sounded good. Some things were started and then abandoned, however, like the display of tweets throughout the show which only lasted for a handful of tweets.
I honestly have no idea what YouTube was going for in terms of ratings, but I have a hard time believing they'll be happy with the live ratings for the first outing of the YouTube Music Awards. Despite having a lineup that would rival the VMAs, the awards peaked at around 220k viewers before sinking down to around 170k. Although one could argue that this is the internet and the success of the show will be determined by view counts after the fact, when you take into account the fact that the VMAs had 10 million viewers and arguably more memorable moments, it's clear that live internet award shows have some room to grow.
For me, one of the best parts of the night came 20 minutes before the show, when YouTube was airing some fantastic in-depth pieces on topics like one-shot music videos. Then came Arcade Fire's truly amazing live music video for "Afterlife". After that, though, Watts and Schwartzman ambled over to pour cold water over everything, and it all went down hill from there.
Ultimately, the first annual YouTube Music Awards proved to be much more complex than anything a network could air, but as a result it was much more confusing. The music video community had a lot more emphasis on directors, but it also mixed up official music videos and user-generated content in a way that only YouTube seems to be able to do. It's the same way that the YouTube Music Awards managed to mix up the performance art it was going for with the throwaway nuts and bolts of an award show.
One thing is very clear in all this - hosting the YouTube Music Awards is a tough nut to crack, and Watts and Schwartzman found that out tonight. And although there were some very cringe-inducing moments in tonight's show, it was interesting enough that we're excited for how things go next year.
