Hard to Give, I'm Never Gonna Forget, But Everybody Needs a Little Forgiveness
By Courtney Enlow | Posted Under Celebrities Are Better than You | Comments (81)
I think it’s time we all healed.
Sunday night at the VMA’s, Taylor Swift performed a new, never-before-heard song all about her experience at last year’s ceremony, in which Kanye West… did what Kanye West did.
If you missed it, and I know you’re telling people you did, you minx, here’s the replay:
An old timey TV plays the infamous clip from last year where pretty little Taylor, the happiest girl in the world, goes up to accept her award and the bucket of pig blood falls on her, concussing the Greatest American Hero Kanye West rushes the stage, grabs the mic, and alerts the viewing public that Beyonce had the best video of the year. Allegedly he was going to let her finish, but alas. After that, a barefoot Taylor emerges from the Little House on the Prairie set to sing a song about last year’s harrowing incident.
When the awardus interruptus occurred, Taylor was a 19-year-old girl who was embarrassed at a major event. This had to suck. I’m not going to take that away from her. I felt bad for her, like everyone else did, but what followed was a shitstorm.
It’s easy to look back now and think, “God, who cares?” but at the time, people. fucking. cared. People went nuts. Kanye West got death threats for this. He had to cancel a huge tour with the biggest pop star on the planet because people refused to buy tickets to see him after what he did to that nice country girl.
It is not an exaggeration to say he received a bigger backlash than Chris Brown. Brown had idiot teenagers defending him; West didn’t even have that.
So, here we are, a year later. Swift emerged victorious. She had a shitty night, and that sucks, but people rallied around her like fucking Rocky and her career thrived because of this enormous publicity surge. So what does she do? She writes an incredibly condescending and melodramatic ballad about this event that a year later, as Aziz Ansari said, was actually kind of hilarious. Barefoot and clad in chiffon, she sang lines like “Wasn’t it easier in your lunchbox days? / Always a bigger bed to crawl into / Wasn’t it beautiful when you believed in everything / And everybody believed in you?” and “Time turns flames to embers / You’ll have new Septembers / Every one of us has messed up too”.
Like… he interrupted you. That’s all. I’m sure it was embarrassing and annoying, but… he interrupted you. That’s it. It was just so not that big a deal. These lyrics imply that this man truly wronged you. All Kanye did was be Kanye. We sure like our celebrities crazy, until they actually do something crazy, then we attack with the torches and pitchforks.
Also, he kind of wasn’t wrong. I mean, I’m not saying Beyonce definitely had the best video of the year, but Swift’s… well, it wasn’t very good. And that’s fine, bless her, she is kind of a tiny mouse person who writes her own music, which I respect and she is very skilled at, though her lyrics often sound like they came out of a 9-year-old’s Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Also, since Beyonce did win Video of the Year, and is a female, one would imagine she would therefore have to win Best Female Video, but whatever, it’s fine, MTV works in mysterious ways.
Basically, people overreacted. And, yeah, the guy fucked up and acted like an idiot, but he didn’t deserve the level of vitriol that followed. When you write a song like this about such a non-event like this, it is incredibly empty. It’s like finding out Cohen wrote “I’m Your Man” about a fun costume party.
So let us all take this opportunity to do as Taylor would do, and forgive those who have wronged us in the most egregious of ways. I would like to take this opportunity to forgive the most horrific smites ever smote against me.
I encourage you to heal as I’ve healed. You will feel lighter. Freer. As though you’ve made as empty a gesture as Ms. Swift. Namaste.
Follow Courtney Enlow on Twitter, and read her other stuff at HoboTrashcan.com.
Each Time You Like, Share, Tweet or Stumble a Pajiba Post, An Angel Does the Paul Rudd Dance
← Terriers Review | It's Like Raaaiiiin, On a Rainy Day | The Ten Highest Paid Actors of the Last Year | A List of Rich White Guys →
Comments
Posted by: kate the great at September 14, 2010 2:49 PM
I forgive Cary Elwes. I think he's suffered enough. I mean, just look at him. Poor thing.
"As you wish..."
Yeah, I wish you'd get on the elliptical and PUT DOWN THE SANDWICH.