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Youtube Music Awards a Hot Mess

History was made on Sunday night, Nov. 3 as our beloved internet sensations crossed over to the real world as the first ever YouTube Music Awards streamed live worldwide.

The winners of all categories were based off the website’s viewer opinions, their commentary, as well as dislikes and likes on certain videos. With such diverse groups of voters that also reign in as the audience, we were also left with a miscellaneous amount of acts that performed that night. Eminem, Lady Gaga, and M.I.A. were among the top musicians present. Jason Schwartzman and Reggie Watts hosted and were more than ready to handle their unscripted roles in the award show.

This show had such a great opportunity to push boundaries on how music awards could be and to promote fan interaction. However, this was not the case. After watching the award show, I was a bit frazzled as to how they pulled this one off. According to USA TODAY, “The YouTube Music Awards sought to redefine expectations for a celebration of popular music, and instead fell short of revolutionizing them.”  Not only were they negatively backing up this event, but Entertainment Weekly thought the show’s artists “performed not one but two improvised songs and [the hosts] in the show’s most awkward moment carried babies through the crowd and tried to interview Macklemore and Lewis as they cried.”But you’ve got to give it to YouTube considering that this was their first go around.

Lady Gaga came out and performed in almost nothing but flannel and a trucker cap, Vanessa Hudgens returned to “act,” and the hoss were left demolishing five cakes in order to find the category’s pick. Ultimately, what could have been tasteful and by any means interesting, was only just as good as what you find these days on YouTube.

Though the crowd got full participation and the audience worldwide could poll in on the votes, all of the innovation and excitement built around this event ultimately failed.