While there were no statements as dramatic as Green Day’s searing, Trump-bashing 2016 AMA performance, the 2017 AMAs made it clear from the beginning that the evening was going to serve in part as a reaction and response to the news today. The show, promised the host, Tracee Ellis Ross, was going to be “filled with earth-shattering women”. Absent the sort of industry gatekeeper quality of the Grammys, the AMAs serve in a sense as pop music’s id: a competing spectacle that lets the Top 40 zeitgeist run rampant. That could make for a refreshing show of unpretentious pop purity, but this year’s AMAs were absent of many of the most surprising and distinct personalities that have defined this year in music. Even Post Malone, who’s song Rockstar has spent more than five weeks at No 1, was relegated to the audience.

Source: The Guardian November 20, 2017 06:33 UTC