Cyrus or Syria, Seriously?

I see a lot of people posting on social media complaining that we are criticizing Miley Cyrus's VMA performance when there are international crises happening. Well, entertainment is entertainment, and really bad entertainment, like watching Miley Cyrus hump a giant finger puppet, does make you want to avert your gaze and focus it instead on terrorist attacks, world hunger, and incurable disease. I'm well aware that there are international crises, and terrible things happening in our own country every day, but I don't focus my attention on them 100% percent of the time. There are people far more qualified to do that than me.

At the same time, I reserve the right to express an opinion about pop culture. I was not even inclined to watch the VMAs in the first place, except that I felt a little old fashioned and out of place for preferring classic rock, blues, and soul music, waxing nostalgic about the 60s and 70s, and still swooning over The Beatles and Paul McCartney. I have been criticized by my peers for that, so I tuned into the show to see what I was missing, what the young people of today, and the hip older people are rocking to.

I was really underwhelmed by what I saw in terms of musical originality or emotional passion. The music was droning and monotonous, but the visuals ranged from freak show to vulgar. The performances I saw, of Miley Cyrus, Lada Gaga, and Katy Perry lacked the vulnerability, tenderness, and authenticity or rawness of a Carly Simon, Janis Joplin, or Aretha Franklin performance. I miss the cool guitar riffs of "Smoke on The Water," "The Sunshine of Your Love," or "After Midnight." Will there ever again be a great masterpiece like "Bohemian Rhapsody?" The new tunes are catchy, but they don't really touch my soul the way the songs of the great artists of the past did.