Britney Spears & Amy Winehouse Tributes At MTV Video Music Awards 2011
August 16, 2011 by Hollywoodite
There will be two main tributes at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards: Britney Spears and the late Amy Winehouse (anyone else still suffer a rude awakening every time there’s a headline about her death, like they can’t believe she’s gone so young?).
Here’s the thing, there was a specific point in 2006/7 where media outlets considered Winehouse as good as dead and some publicly admitted pre-writing her obituary. Five years ago. Remember? A bunch of very, very large outlets were somehow caught out (perhaps an incomplete obit was published by accident, but they were “outed” rather than admitting, it’s hard to recall) and they were like “Um, yeah, she’s a drug-addict and her parents already started planning her funeral.” Oh, then there’s that. Winehouse’s parents started planning a funeral five years ago, around the time she was filmed high on heroin and the footage was sold to the now-defunct News Of The World newspaper. And Spears/ Lohan and a few others were in the same boat, with people doing the same. The extent of Lohan’s alcoholism and drug-addiction has since been exposed. And Spears was rumoured to have been on several drugs, including cocaine (these stayed rumours though). And people were lumping these girls together, genuinely not expecting them to live the year. And here we are: Winehouse has passed at 27, Spears is under conservatorship at 29 with two kids and two failed marriages, and Lohan’s effectively still and addict.
MTV is planning a tribute to Britney Spears as part of the Video Music Awards, and “talking about acknowledging” the late Amy Winehouse.
“Britney will be at the show and we’ll be paying tribute to her,” the event’s executive producer Amy Doyle told Billboard.com. “She was having an incredible year and she is so beloved by the MTV audience that we started to think what could we do that would be a different experience.”
Winehouse, whose death last month shook the industry, will also be a part of this year’s program. “We had a great history with Amy. She was very near and dear to us,” says Doyle.
The network recently announced its first slate of presenters (including Selena Gomez, Seth Rogen and Kim Kardashian) and performers (including Adele, Chris Brown and Bruno Mars) for the August 28th telecast. – via Gossip Cop.
Well, Winehouse and Spears are going to be honoured at the August 28 VMAs. It was supposed to be a belated tribute to Spears anyway, she’s been attending the awards for around 13-years (it’s weird they didn’t try harder for her 10-year anniversary, despite her issues, right?) And the Winehouse tribute… will there even be a good enough caliber of artist in attendance to do her pre-addiction vocals justice IF they take this beyond Spears’ verbal nod? Maybe, but it’s doubtful. They should stick to Spears’ tribute and leave any sung tributes to this year’s Grammys.
Spears’ commercial for this years awards is a weird one, she’s barely in it and the whole thing’s unimaginative and underwhelming. The photos from behind-the-scenes of that shoot are cute, though.
PHOTO CREDIT – MTV.COM
