Kyna Fitzpatrick

Sun, May,17 the 2015 Billboard Awards were held in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. It featured several music stars that topped the BillBoard charts and, gave tribute to some stars that have recently passed away. It was hosted by Ludacris and John Legend’s wife, Chrissy Teigen. Music Stars like Ed Sheeren, Iggy, Britney Spears, and Kanye West along with other stars performed some of their biggest hits. Taylor Swift owned the night and premiered her new music video for Bad Blood at the opening of the show.

The Billboard Awards show did have its highs and lows throughout the show. The show started out by premiering Taylor Swifts new album, Bad Blood, which featured stars like Jessica Alba, Cindy Crawford, Kendrick Lamar, Ellen Pompeo, Zendaya, and many other stars. Practically every celebrity was in the video even if they were a singer or not. It was one of the better moments of the night and made it a very thrilling and exciting opening to the award show.

The hosts of the show (Ludacris and Chrissy) were okay but didn’t really seem to make the show all that entertaining. Ludacris barely said anything throughout the entire night and only introduced a few people and singers. Chrissy was all over the place and seemed to be doing most of the introducing and talking throughout the show.

Later on in the show we heard a performance from Nick Jonas, who sang an electric version of his biggest hit, Jealous. This seemed to help him climb further away from his old sound he had with his brothers and gave him a whole new sound that he was looking for that appealed to the audience and fans.

The Simple minds performing Don’t You Forget About Me to celebrate the thirty year anniversary of the Breakfast Club. The performance was great and the audience seemed to like it. Later on, Hozier sang Take Me To Church which is still (two years later) a great song and can still get the crowd in on the performance.

Along with some of the good performances last night there were some bad ones that brought the whole night crashing down into a fiery pit of ashes and dirt. Now here’s what went wrong:

Van Halen featuring David Lee Roth was one of the performances that sent the night crashing down. The performance was all over the place and the band seemed to drown out the singers voices giving it more of a rock and roll theme over the contemporary when it should have been combined.

Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth performed See You Again as a tribute to Paul Walker and looked like a total mess on stage. Wiz Khalifa was jumping around on the stage doing some type of dance that did not fit the song. Not to mention that he came out there with a jacket, showing his bony chest, and wearing ripped jeans. His attire didn’t seem to fit in with the other performers on the stage who were wearing suits and dresses and playing classical  instruments.

There was also a performance by Iggy and Britney Spears which featured a new song, that was terrible, called Pretty Girls. The dancers and everything else were good but Iggy barely rapped in it and it was mostly Britney singing the chorus over and over again which made the performance all-in-all terrible with the two singers mostly walking around on the stage.

Mariah Carey also made an appearance and seemed to not quite have it together. The song she sang usually has a lot of higher notes in it which she did not seem to be hitting. This giving the crowd nothing to sing along too.

Last but not least, Kanye West delivered a performance that clearly violated the ABC sensor rules. Basically, every other word was muted out by the television station. You could barely see him perform because of all the smoke and “fire”. The body suit that he was wearing looking like he was about to prepare for war and not a award show. Before he even got on the stage, he and his sister and laws were booed by the crowd. But, the crowd still seemed to enjoy the performance or, at least what little they could hear of it.

All-in-all it was an interesting night full of good performances and bad ones that kept the audience and people watching captivated.