Don’t get me wrong, I love Brit-Brit and have been pulling for her to beat her reported battle with bipolar disorder, but last night’s MTV Video Music Awards was such a Britney lovefest that it feels as if a recount should be demanded. Sure, English comedian Russell Brand’s hosting may not have gone over very well– I don’t think the audience got his distinctively Brit wit and his joke about his hair and mental illness was, as could be expected with Britney in the room, a lead balloon and his Jordin Sparks/Jonas Brothers/Purity Ring sparring was awkward–but the fact that Ms. Spears received three Moonmen in a year when she wasn’t exactly musically relevant doesn’t go over well with me.
Although once rumored to be performing, with gossips hoping the pop star would recreate her buzz-worthy VMA openers from 2000 and 2001 and erase the disaster of her critically lambasted 2007 performance, Britney instead opened the show with a tepidly amusing sketch with “Superbad’s” Jonah Hill and then came out to welcome everyone to the 25th anniversary of the VMAs. She looked good, her voice was clear, and she even punctuated the welcome with a goofy sticking out of the tongue, a self-deprecating touch we’ve come to expect from the pop princess. I was proud.

When she beat out “I Kissed a Girl’s” Katy Perry for Female Video of the Year, an award Britney had never won, to a standing ovation, I thought that an appreciative bone had been thrown. But, when she walked away with Best Pop Video and Best Video of the Year, I’d had enough. Perhaps MTV was just playing to the fact that in this less than stellar 25th anniversary show, they had no real superstars that connected the show to its glorious watercooler chatter-inspiring past: No Madonna, no Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie. Britney was that tenuous link.
But, has anyone actually seen this video “Piece of Me” that won all these awards? I think I may have seen it once; and yes, I do watch MTV. [Insert joke about MTV not actually playing videos anymore.] I’m not sure what the motivation was in awarding Spears those Moonmen, pandering to or propping up, but let’s save the statuettes for her real comeback. Because, to paraphrase one of Spears’ songs, her fans know that she can do it again.