The Billboard Music Awards is probably the silliest , least pressing honour show on TV . Nominees and winners are determine by sales , airplay , and social medium metrics instead of votes , making the actual effect a actual popularity contest . It ’s the Super Bowl for data point junkies , but pointless to most hoi polloi . So , what is it good for ? Show - stop performances , like the clinic in pop music professionalism Britney Spears put on last night .
Contrary to whatBruno Mars might think , the show was n’t a total short sleep . Rihanna sang a moving , ticker - turn interpretation of theANTIstandout " Love on the Brain , " Kesha delivered a rousing performance of to Bob Dylan ’s " It Ai n’t Me Babe , " and Celine Dion paid testimonial to her previous husband with a cover of Queen ’s " The Show Must Go On . " But Britney ’s scuttle performance was the main attraction , a lofty compounding of Las Vegas glitz and ' 00s pop excess .
ask a good luck from wowing audiences at her Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino residency , the 34 - class - old star danced withMortal Kombatextras , pole dance , and mount a elephantine guitar like a mechanical bull , all while do tracks like " Work , " " Toxic , " " striver 4 U , " and more . It was the pure dad flashback , a monitor of just how far she ’s occur since " … Baby One More Time . " Watch it below :
Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty
It ’s a execution that come at an interesting moment in Britney ’s calling . As a revelatoryNew York Timespiece examined before this month , Spears stilllives under the Margaret Court - O.K. conservatorshipof her don and an attorney , who check all of her fiscal decisions and many other aspects of her life . It ’s an strange transcription , and she ’s spill the beans about it less and less in public over the years .
Even as she set up a new record album , posts charmingInstagram picsabout her home life , and delivers gravid goggle box performances , there ’s still a closed - off , unknowable quality to Britney . Her carrying out last nighttime did n’t exactly allow a peep behind that drape . It was n’t vulnerable . Instead , it put her in the middle of a circus - same spectacle , picture her talent and tenacity while letting her remain the beguiling pop enigma she ’s been for over a decade . Maybe that ’s what makes it so powerful – but also so puzzling .
Sign up herefor our daily Thrillist email , and get your fix of the best in food / drink / playfulness .
