| Wednesday 31 January 1996 |
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Music awards for a mythical middle America
The American Music Awards have had better days, and nights, than on Monday, when the 23d annual show was broadcast on ABC from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Back in 1985, when rock's embrace of television was at its most wholehearted, the American Music Awards attracted enough major performers so that recording sessions for the all-star benefit single "We Are the World" could be scheduled around the show. This year, big stars like Michael Jackson, Pearl Jam and four out of five Eagles didn't bother to show up. A star who did, Garth Brooks, rejected the show's top award, for favorite artist of the year.
First, Mr. Brooks registered shock. Then he hugged the other nominees in attendance: Boyz II Men, TLC and Hootie and the Blowfish. (Green Day was absent.) Onstage, he declared: "I cannot agree with this. Music is made up of a lot of people." Saying he meant no disrespect, he concluded, "I'm going to leave it right here," and walked off the stage without the award. It would have been his 10th American Music Award; he had collected two others earlier in the night.
It was a peculiar moment on a show with a nebulous mandate. The American Music Awards are part of Dick Clark's stable of awards shows, along with the Golden Globes and the Academy of Country Music Awards. It was a pioneer among shows unconnected to an organization of entertainment-business professionals. But like the People's Choice Awards or the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, the American Music Awards promise star appearances to the network and prime-time exposure to the stars, one big happy cross-promotional package.
With so many awards shows, however, the talent pool is draining. On Monday night, the star power was unimpressive. Mariah Carey did appear, warming up for a widely predicted sweep of the Grammy Awards; she opened the show singing oohs, aahs and whistling-teakettle high notes. In an attempt at relevance, an earnest Mr. Brooks, who is from Oklahoma, sang a would-be inspirational song against a backdrop of news clips of the bombing at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City last April.
Shania Twain, who won the award for favorite new country artist, grabbed as much attention with her wardrobe - a low-cut, shiny black bustier with skin-tight pants to match - as with her husky honky-tonk singing. Brandy, the 16-year-old rhythm-and-blues singer, revealed herself as a creation of the recording and video studio, singing flat and trying gestures that looked like Simon-says routines. Nearly half of L.L. Cool J.'s current rap hit, "HeyLover", was silenced for its sexual and drug references. Otherwise the show offered warmed-over former hit makers: Luther Vandross singing "The Impossible Dream", Lionel Richie in priestly black promising fidelity, and Neil Diamond trying to put Pink Floyd's moroseness ("Is anybody out there?") in a country setting. Looking very out of place, Smashing Pumpkins, the alternative-rock band, which was nominated for no awards, performed late in the show, playing an entire song while one camera circled the band.
For its presenters, the show paired B-list television actors like Tori Spelling with mid-level musicians like Meat Loaf. That made Tommy Lee of Motley Crue and Pamela (formerly Anderson) Lee of "Baywatch" the perfect couple.
The American Music Awards started in 1974 when the Grammy Awards left ABC for CBS. The show ditched the dozens of Grammy categories with specialized appeal - jazz, classical, folk, blues - and stuck to hits in pop, country, rhythm-and-blues and hard rock. Where the Grammys poll people with music-business careers, offering a glimpse of what entrenched professionals think of their products, the American Music Awards nominate three best-selling albums, then send ballots to "a representative sample of record buyers". Whoever they are, they make Grammy voters look like wild-eyed avant-gardists; at the American Music Awards, bland common-denominator pop rules.
The people who return the ballots are nothing if not loyal. One American Music Award is the gateway to 5, 10, maybe more, especially for country performers; Reba McEntire won her 9th award on Monday, and Alabama picked up its 19th. Best-selling, innocuous newcomers like Hootie and the Blowfish and Ms. Twain could not be entirely ignored - there are new-artist categories - but they couldn't stand up to longtime favorites like the Eagles, Mr. Brooks or Ms. McEntire.
The American Music Awards seem geared to an imagined middle America where people listen to "lite music" on the radio and stick to established brand names. It's a counterweight to the faddish side of the music business, but it doesn't have much cachet. After Mr. Lee announced the hard-rock award for Pearl Jam, he joked, "The guys in Pearl Jam are way too fabulous to be here tonight." He was right. (The New York Times)
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