Once a year, every year, Canadian media come together for a whirlwind evening that celebrates the best and most popular pop sensations raised on maple syrup.
By which, of course, I mean Justin Bieber.
There are no other Canadian pop sensations.
…Just kidding!
This year’s MMVAs were marked with the usual fan-frenzied panoply: kids camp out for 5 days for wristbands; Queen West becomes a no-fly zone, and Mariana’s Trench arrives with marching band escorting a bouncing palace, clad in the first of the evening’s tributes to Michael Jackson and… anthropomorphic blow-up horses…?
(No one from the band would field questions on why they didn’t just ride themselves in.)….
Aside from all the usual items on trend-spotters’ lists — sparkles! mullet dresses! “pops of colour”! — this year’s performers, presenters, nominees and attendees all must have received the same memo encouraging them to support our troops. Katy Perry graced the red carpet in a full-on breast-plate which, in all fairness, is probs DDoubly effective given the fun-bag cushions behind it.
But her strategy was only half-wrought. She left herself wiiiiiiiiiide open to be sheerly outflanked. Seriously though, someone forgot to finish the back of her dress, right? Is that why she needed to bring a pint-sized army?
Good thing Lights showed up wearing the slip that Katy should have worn under her dress.
I don’t know about Carly Rae Jepsen taking home the statuette for Best Dressed. Clear winners in my book were Lucy Hale’s wine / oxblood red-carpet peplum-detailed dress. Girlfriend looked put together and classy, and I would probably stab someone for half an hour in her stylist’s chair.
Oh and Nelly Furtado’s performance dress can find it’s way into my closet at any point in the next five minutes, thank you kindly. I may even have some rave bracelets left over from 1999 that I can string through my ears. It’s like a built-in emergency exit — the earrings are the backup lighting in the event of a power failure, and we can all gently let ourselves down her Rapunzel pony-tail.
More fun trend-spotting: jewelry that rivals the front grill of a 1969 Mercury. To wit, Far East Movement’s matchy-match bling and “Dirty Bass” knuckle-dusters that could all reasonably double as service plates. LMFAO’S Redfoo stepped it up that much more by actually just taking the licence plate off and stringing it around his neck.
What is it with the pop-tartlet youth of this nation? Are we really that obsessed with Jepsen’s legs? What is with this double-thigh-slit on her and Shenae Grimes?
I totally support Shenae repping a Canadian designer (custom designed Amanda Lew Kee, who also clad the Degrassi alum in 2010), but there’s just no way to take the double-Angelina-leg seriously.
I don’t really want to spend too much time pondering what’s going on in Shenae’s crotch, but it must be something kind of funky if she needed that much ventilation. Someone get that girl some cotton panties and plain yogurt.
On the topic of appropriate bottom-half ventilation, the leather-daddy look was well-represented this year. Carly Rae’s floor-length-loin-cloth-with-neon-bib may have edged out the plethora of leather pants for practicality in muggy 30+degree humidity. Both our beloved Biebs and Redfoo opted for hide, but I can’t tell who erred less.
The zips are actually to encourage airflow, while Bieb’s crimson harem leather jeans (I never thought the day would come when I would have to type that string of words) would prohibit, err, cloistered crotchal moistness. (One would hope.)
Kelly Clarkson really stepped up her game this year — anyone remember the barefoot, denim bellbottoms look in 2009? That Stella-McCartney-esque silhouette illusion dress made her look like a million bucks, but why bother with the flesh-tone modesty sleeves? Is she only amish from her wrists to her shoulders? Let’s just cut them off, bedazzle them, and attach them to Katy Perry. Her lady parts during her performance may have needed the extra coverage.
Yes, she appears to be wearing a purple merkin under her sparkly nude leotard (in what I could only hope is an attempt to out-do Lady Gaga’s 2011 MMVA turquoise merkin — that gesture hopefully a veiled reference to Peaches’s iconic “Set It Off” video), but boy, does that set-design scream for an intergenerational performance duo. Anyone else get Crazy Town stuck in their head after seeing that?
I see the sun breaking shining through dark clouds
And a vision of you standing out in a crowd.
Come come my lady
You’re my butterfly
Sugar baby
Come my lady you’re my
Pretty baby ill make your legs shake
You make me go crazy.
It could happen, right?
