American Music Awards Won By Americans. And Chipmunks
The American Music Awards exist to recognise excellence in American music, and last night at the AMAs excellence was recognised.
We’re talking, of course, about Alvin And The Chipmunks. In a career spanning five decades, Alvin And The Chipmunks have seen it all – the highs represented by any of their six Grammy wins, the lows by that bit in their movie where one of them actually eats a turd – but now their comeback has been well and truly sealed with an American Music Award for Best Soundtrack.
You have to hand it to the American Music Awards, really – it gave an award to a fictional novelty group made of poo-chomping rodents and still came out looking more credible than the MTV VMAs. But that’s probably what you get when you don’t give Britney Spears the Album Of The Year award just because she happens to have some hair and isn’t dribbling.
If an artist wants proof that their achievements have been appreciated by their peers and paymasters, recognition by the American Music Awards is the thing to aim for. Serious, well-respected and industry-minded, the AMAs are just like The Brits, only they’re American so they don’t feel guilt-obliged to keep nominating Lemar for stuff.
The difference between the AMAs and the MTV VMAs are vast. Firstly, the AMAs don’t rely on the cheap, tawdry sensationalist gimmicks of the MTV VMAs. Secondly, the AMAs think that the soundtrack to Alvin And The Chipmunks was really bloody cool.
That’s right – the Alvin And The Chipmunks movie soundtrack, featuring stirring anthems like Funkytown, Get Munk’d and, well, this – is officially better than any other soundtrack released in the last year. And rightly so – our sincere congratulations go out to Alvin and The Chipmunks. This victory is well deserved, especially so soon after the career low that was Little Alvin And The Mini-Munks, the Heaven’s Gate of low-budget rodent puppetry movies.
However, Alvin And The Chipmunks weren’t the only winners at the AMAs last night – infant Michael Jackson impersonator Chris Brown managed to win AMAs for artist of the year, male pop/rock artist and male soul/R&B artist, while Linkin Park, Enrique Iglesias and Annie Lennox also inexplicably won awards.
Oh, and Kanye West was unfortunately unable to continue his amazing streak of not winning awards and then throwing a tantrum about it because he actually won an AMA for male rap/hip-hop artist. So it’s a testament to Kanye’s ingenuity that he ended up throwing a tantrum because Lil’ Wayne didn’t win it instead. People reports:
“I want to give this award to Wayne,” he said. “If it was last year it would have been my award.” It was West’s second trophy of the night, following his win for rap/hip-hop album, for Graduation. “It’s our responsibility as musicians to push music to the point it was in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. “I want to be Elvis.”
But, for all this confusing talk about pushing music to the point where everything sounds like Freddie And The Dreamers, we shouldn’t forget that last night’s AMAs really belonged to Alvin And The Chipmunks. Hopefully this win will be the start of something huge for the group. And by that we mean a heartbreaking cover version of One Sweet Day featuring The Crazy Frog. Make it happen, chipmunks.
We were just trying to compete with that British music awards show that gave Rick Astley the title of Most Amazing and Influential Artist in the History of Music.