Pop Culture Insert

Live, from unending Grammy performances:

How much did Beyonce fucking hate Rihanna in that moment where she grabbed Jay-Z’s hand and led him, triumphant, to the stage?

That was all about follow me, Rihanna-anna-anna, bask in the wake of me. Beyonce had just rolled down the freaking river with Tina Turner, likely the pinnacle of both their careers. But it’s the even younger, brighter thing who got to strut there as the winner, hotter than anyone there, stopping to pick up Beyonce’s boyfriend…

Somewhere in a dark room, Britney Spears is representing Beyonce’s momentary mindset. She’s taking the handful of pills handed to her by some hand and crying with a British accent. She thinks about the alternate world where she accepted Umbrella when it was first offered and that’s her up there with Jay-Z and Justin is in the audience so proud of her with the kids, their adopted kids from Africa and also from the same Asian country as Angelina’s. She thanks her chihuahua, London, the Academy, and Jesus, for her first-ever Oscar.

A night of weirdly meta performance — only appropriate, I guess, to encapsulate the most navel-gazing, sensationalized year in media/music clusterfuck history. Kanye West’s tribute to his mother was moving and tasteful: the way her loss can make a crowd tear up is testament to how keenly we all feel an unexpected death.

Yet few ever mention that she died at least partially from trying to attain the sort of beauty found in music videos. She died not from overdose or exposure or insurgent incursion, but because there is something in the air and water out there the says to famous people change your selves, change your bodies, you are not okay the way you are.

But maybe you could go into treatment?

Because then there’s Amy Winehouse, of course, all toothy grins for the camera when they zoom in for a close-up every time she says the word “rehab.” In a way, she legitimized this whole crazy trend for substance/psychiatric/”issues” internment, and her own telling swan dive and current actual status in rehab only adds an irony music critics will be salivating over for years. My old professors are probably already showing clips of her in classes.

I’d like to think that by anointing her, even after everything, the cracked-out concerts and the crack, the shady jailed husband, the fights and the attacks on the paparazzi and the dabbling in rehab, the industry and the public were really giving a big fuck you to the moral thought police. Unfortunately, knowing this Hollywood, they were begrudgingly recognizing talent where it was due and also wanted to see what Amy’d do — secretly hoped she’d fail and fall apart like at her concerts and bust a Britney VMA move, but that moment can never come again.

In my college class “The Literature of Addiction,” the Professor showed us a clip of a famous jazz singer strung up on heroin, alive and electrified with the music. They definitely had Amy on something tonight, something stronger than motherly love, as she was a whole lot sharper than we’ve seen her perform or interact in ages. Someone finally grabbed the bull by the fucking beehive and made her aware that she couldn’t fuckover the Grammys like some shit club, not if she wanted to be praised for smoking crack in this town again.

I’m not surprised she won, and applaud the artistry she showed in shouting out to her douchebag incarcerated husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. Changing a bunch of lyrics to Blake pleas is probably right now going a long way towards helping his hearings in the British trial system. Their judges seem partial to rock.

Time to retire with the Italian tenors. What will we honor next?!