There's been a great deal of hand wringing and head shaking over Britney Spears' less than stellar performance at the MTV VMAs. As the dust slowly settles — her lawyer and her manager have both dumped her — a great deal of ink (newspapers, magazines), hours of footage (TV, the web) and billions of pixels (the blogosphere) have been dedicated to picking apart the former pop queen's demise.Another story rising from the ashes is the success of R&B artist Chris Brown, and the "amazing" performance he gave. Even Justin Timberlake, during the course of the show sang this young pop star's praises. But if you watch Brown's performance closely, two things stick out like Madonna at a Roshashana celebration:
1. Almost all of his moves are stolen from Michael Jackson. At one point, the music even samples "Billie Jean," while Brown recreates the moves from Jackson's earth shattering Grammy performance from years gone by. (So much for creativity.)
2. Chris Brown, like Spears, lip-synced his entire performance. Granted, he spent his on-stage time jumping, flipping and gyrating from one side of the stage to the other, which can make it hard to sing... but not impossible.
I guess I can forgive the first point, under the guise of, "homage." But the second point... why do we forgive (and praise, in some cases) Brown, but crucify Britney? Why the double standard? I'm not forgiving Britney for the lackluster performance, but I'm not about to crown Chris Brown as the next big thing, either.
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