The Round Table

After a brief break in favor of TRT March Music Madness, and other distractions, Flashback Friday has finally returned to The Round Table.

Most of the previous selections have been hip hop or R&B from the 80s and 90s. This week, it’s time to go to the way-back machine for a dose of classic rock.

You’ve already been treated to a version of “We Will Rock You“, performed in the famed Pepsi commercial by Beyonce, Pink and Britney Spears.

Now get ready for a true double dip. While you have been forced to wait so long for another installment of Flashback Friday, it might be appropriate to pay tribute to possibly one of the most underrated bands of the 70s with, The Weight.

The Band had so many great songs, it’s hard to choose just one. That’s why this week, we’ve decided to entertain you with two videos. For the sake of familiarity, The Weight is a fairly easy call, given it is arguably their most famous song, covered by numerous bands and attempted otherwise in karaoke bars.

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It’s been a minute since we’ve posted a Flashback Friday here at TRT, so we figured we should come back with some pop music goodness. Remember the late ’90s into early ’00s when the music industry was turning profit hand over fist? It wasn’t a question of when artists would hit platinum status, but rather how many times over? I sure do.

The golden days of pop music where cookie-cutter “boy-bands” and bleach blond clones ruled the airwaves with their universally happy, catchy tunes with synchronized dance moves and clothes that shed with each appearance. While many of the wannabes have disappeared now, the core performers of that time period still remain, including the three ladies pictured above (Britney, Pink, Beyonce). Now, maybe it’s my warped sense of reality, but didn’t the world seem like a happier place then? Either way, you can’t deny the star power that is this 2003 Pepsi commercial featuring Britney Spears, Beyonce, Pink and Enrique Iglesias.

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The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards have come and gone and one thing is clear: Lady Gaga was upstaged. Lady Gaga fans were all abuzz as their head monster took 2 awards during the pre-show festivities for Best Dance Recording and Best Electronic Dance Album, but they’d soon be disappointed as she was shut out in the rest of the categories thanks to Taylor Swift.

Best performance of the night, hands down, went to Pink for her aerial, death defying performance of “Glitter in the Air” without a harness. Even if you remove Pink’s crazy acrobatics, you’re still left with an absolutely mesmerizing performance, in which she sang every note live. There was no screaming, no fire shooting in the air, no special guest, just Pink doing what she does best. Kelly Clarkson put it best when she said, “It’s official….the age of lip-sync is over. If Pink can sing live, upside down, spinning/flying through the air then there are no excuses.”

Check out Pink’s “Glitter in the Air” performance after the jump. It’s easier to watch it the second go around, now that you know she doesn’t fall from the sky. Full list of Grammy winners. Shout out to Kings of Leon for stealing the Grammy for Record of the Year in “Use Somebody.”

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With ratings of the Video Music Awards (VMAs) steadily declining, it has been no surprise that for the last few years MTV has done its best to highlight celebrities in attendance that were potential ticking-time bombs. Two words: Britney Spears.

Well, with Miss Brit on the mend or at least on tour, MTV came up with the next best option –piggy-back off of Michael Jackson’s death. Leading up to the show, MTV promos aired teasing this year would be a special tribute show featuring an appearance by the typically low-key Janet Jackson. As it turns out, it was the storyline they didn’t draft (for once) that they can thank for the ratings spike. Enter Kanye West.

Since, we’ve already said a mouthful about Kanye’s antics, so we won’t rehash it, rather, it’s important to note that MTV Networks enjoyed a nice ratings bump on the VMAs, which was only magnified by the now infamous Kanye/Swift confrontation. According to Digital Music News, the VMAs garnered a crowd of 26.9 million, up 17 percent from 23 million last year.  That measures the number of people that watched the show at some point – across MTV, MTV2, and VH1 – a total that can fluctuate in reaction to real-time occurrences like theKanye interruption. Overall, the average viewer base was the best since 2004, and among the under-35 set, MTV Networks scored its best showing since 2005.

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Kanye West needs a muzzle. His proneness to child-like temper-tantrums was quite apparently last night at the  2009 MTV VMAs. In the event you were living under rock, just mere minutes after Janet Jackson and a troupe of dancers poignantly paid tribute to Michael Jackson, Kayne West decided it was time to upstage the competition as Taylor Swift was honored with the award for “Best Female Video” beating out both Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

Desperate for attention, Kanye ran up to the podium, yanked the microphone out of Swift’s hands and declared that Beyonce should have won the award. A shocked Swift stood mouth agape as the audience rained down on Kanye with endless boos. The camera panned to Beyonce who looked almost as mortified as Swift (if not more).

The twittersphere quickly heated up as hashtags #boycottkanye, #kanyeisadouche surfaced on top trends. Artists began frantically tweeting as from Pink (“Kanye is a piece of sh*t. Quote me,” to Katy Perry (“FUCK U KANYE. IT’S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN,”) to Joel Madden (“All i’m saying is Taylor Swift is a young chic and you just walk up and grab the mic,” and beyond.

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