Music Monday – “It’s our party we can do what we want/It’s our party we can say what we want.”

So everybody’s talking about the raunchy Miley Cyrus performance last night at the MTV Video Music Awards (including perhaps the weirdest MetaFilter thread ever where a discussion of whether the Miley Cyrus performance is pushing the “real” news about Syria off of front pages leads to a long parallel thread that jumps back and forth with people alternating comments about Cyrus & Syria.)

As always with these “controversies”, the funniest part to me is how they inevitably get what the performer wants – attention and buzz – going back to Elvis shaking his hips on Ed Sullivan although that (probably) wasn’t quite so calculated as compared to more recent yet surprisingly similar stunts.

It’s also hilarious how these performances enrage everyone – liberals are screaming about how it was demeaning to women, African Americans, African American women, and cruel to animals.  Conservatives are screaming about how it was heavily sexualized and corrupting our youth (although some basically just threw up their hands at how ludicrous the whole thing was.)

Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus has the record for most video views in a 24-hour period and, as the most buzzed about moment of the show that featured non-shrinking violets such as Lady Gaga, Kayne West and even an N-Sync reunion, she’s well-positioned to break her own record when she releases her next single.  [2013-09-19 – Edit: Also, she might be, for real, the most punk rock artist out there today.]

Yawn.

Oh, well, at least this grumpy old man has learned a new word.  

Most of the clips I’ve seen of the controversial performance are being removed from YouTube as soon as they’re uploaded so I figured I’d post another Cyrus video that was extremely controversial when it first came out…

“Achy Breaky Heart” – Billy Ray Cyrus

I’m not even kidding about how that video was controversial when it came out.  But I’ve got to be completely honest – I actually quite liked this Billy Ray Cyrus song when I was in high school:  

“Could’ve Been Me” – Billy Ray Cyrus

Edit: Popular YouTube comedian/songwriter Jon Lajoie quickly released a song which perfectly captures the hypocrisy of the whole situation…

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