Kanye West performs at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards held at Paramount Pictures Studio Lot on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008, in Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES -- With performances by some of music's hottest acts -- Beyonce, Christina Aguilera, Kanye West, the Jonas Brothers and 15 others -- who needs awards?
The American Music Awards, presented Sunday during a live broadcast on ABC, will keep with its long-held tradition of wedging prizes in between action-packed performances.
"This year more than ever," said Orly Adelson, president of Dick Clark Productions, which puts on the show. "We have 19 performances, which we've never done before. Every big artist this year said yes, and we wanted them all."
Miley Cyrus won't just sing, she'll celebrate her "Sweet 16" on the show, she said.
New Kids on the Block will perform a medley of songs, including their new single, marking their return to the AMAs after 17 years.
Coldplay and Leona Lewis will make their American Music Award debuts, and Alicia Keys and Sarah McLachlan will perform with yet-to-be-announced artists in genre-crossing mash-ups.
Other artists slated to perform include Mariah Carey, Pink, Ne-Yo, Taylor Swift and Annie Lennox, who will receive the Award of Merit, an honour previously bestowed on Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Frank Sinatra and James Brown, among others.
There will be other awards, too, chosen by online voters in 21 categories.
Keys leads nominees with five nods, including artist of the year and favourite female artist in both the pop/rock and soul/R&B categories.
Coldplay and the Eagles have four nominations each, while Chris Brown and Lil Wayne have three apiece.
All are also contenders for artist of the year.
"We do need the awards, because it goes back to the fact that this is a show for the fans," Adelson said. "Fans are determining the winners, and that's what makes it exciting."
The roster of presenters is just as star-studded as the list of performers. Terrence Howard, Kate Walsh, Paris Hilton, T-Pain, Ashley Tisdale and Nick Lachey are set to help hand out trophies.
Jimmy Kimmel returns for a fifth time as host of the two-hour show, held at the Nokia Theatre.
Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreak - the Sunday Times review:
***** OUT OF ***** STARS
This so should not work: an album by a rap superstar that features almost no rapping at all; whose sonic tones (pulsing electro beats, synth bass, minor keys) are, barring two exceptions, of a sombre hue; on which West, autotuned and Vocodered, elects to sing; and whose limited palette is bound to strike some as samey to the point of tedium. Yet 808s & Heartbreak is a triumph, recklessly departing from the commercially copper-bottomed script and venturing far beyond West’s comfort zone. The death, last year, of his mother and his break-up with his fiancée seem to have unlocked an emotional candour of such a personal nature that listening to songs such as Street Lights and Love Lockdown can seem almost voyeuristic. On the latter, West combines a childlike piano motif with hurtling, tribal drums and a chorus whose spryness cannot obscure the bleakness at its heart. One of the album’s most fascinating aspects is that, no matter how deep West delves into the dark heart of his state of mind, his sharp ear for hooks cannot help but assert itself. Bad News’s funereal northern-soul two-step might be strange, but it lodges in the head. And the sheer mad fun of Paranoid’s nods to Blue Monday and Van Halen’s Jump is evidence that, amid the heartbreak, West is reconnecting with his mischievous side, too. A bizarre, brave and brilliant album.
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