Here we have the "iHeartRadio Music Awards 2019" and the title already gives away that this ia a music awards show. I must admit I have never heard about this particular one until recently when I came across this 2019 edition. It isn't too long at under 90 minutes not counting commercials in-between. This one struggles with an issue that is frequent for music awards shows these days: too much music, not enough awards. I mean there are enough awards, but these aren't shown, just rushed in quickly and mentioned (if at all) that an awards announcer won an award him-/herself. (Can I do without the 3rd gender here...?) As for the music, the show started with halsey and I usually like her more than I did here, also not my favorite hair color of hers she was showing here. Pretty forgettable opening. The better performances as the show progressed came from Backstreet Boys playing one of their classics as well as Kacey Musgraves. But if you check the "cast list" here, it does look pretty impressive for an awards show I have never heard about: Katy Perry, Steven Tyler are just twi big names. But yeah maybe they should drop the "iHeartRadio" from the title if they ever want to be taken seriously. We don't have the Coca Cola Grammys either. Oscar winner Jamie Foxx was there too introducing Alicia Keys twice actually and she was one of several special award winners. Many awards weren't competitive that night, but had just one winner and this was way too much. Except Keys, these awards went to Swift, Grande and Brooks. The way how Keys got her daughter up on stage was pretty cringeworthy and don't even get me started about the name. By the way, why are they still giving awards to her? She was okay early in her career, always a bit overrated, but songs with the lyrical depth of "This Girl is on Fire" hardly deserve any recognition. Or just negative recognition lets say. Garth Brooks is a legend I suppose, no denying there, but he sure got fatter than I expected. Talor Swift pretty bad, same like Keys as she has been making crap music for a long time now after an actually really good start into her career early on. And boy is she a bad actress. Her acceptance speech felt so fake, especially that moment when she praised herself mentioning her tour that has been the most-visited (or so) ever while clumsily attempting to attribute this to her fans. Horrible stuff and almost physically painful to watch. So anything positive to say here? Well, I mentioned the two good performances already and other than that only that the show did not run for 2 hours or so. Also I just checked the winners list and there are many more than I expected, many actually that did not get a single mention at the event. Which is normally a negative deal breaker, but here maybe that is a good thing that we don't find out any further about "favourite tour phtographer", "song that left us shook", "cutest musician's pet" and "Regional Mexican Artist of the Year" Can only shake my head at these. And a few more. Also what was Chris Pratt doing there, what a disappointment this was after I will admit I was a bit curious about who this surprise presenter would be. Pratt with his usual non-funny routine, this time involving Garth Brooks and Bradley Cooper, could of course not hide away that his connection to music is non-existent. Or lets say his connection to quality music. Which on the other hand means that maybe he was probably spot-on to appear that night. Huge thumbs-down for this one. Highly not recommended.
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