Billboard jackpot

 

Handing awards seems like an easy enough task: you get a jury and/or public voting to decide on a winner in a series of set categories, have an event to give each some kind of trophy, everyone (who won) is happy, you get yourself a couple of nice Instagram moments and everyone goes home. Right? Not exactly: the thing with prizes is that, obviously, not everyone get to win them. And the people left out are equally as important as those who actually win…

Case in point: the latest Grammy awards not only had The Weeknd left without a single win, but also without a single nomination, which prompted the artist to announce that he was boycotting the event. Drake followed suit as the single biggest chart topper in recent years, a fact that is not quite reflected in his Grammy tally to date — 4 trophies out of 42 nominations… Granted, the recent Brit Awards ceremony did good when awarding most of the top prizes to women performers — a rare feat — but, over all, the exercise has proven complex of late, especially as society as a whole becomes more sensitive to gender, sexual orientation and/or racial bias…

Which brings us to yesterday’s Billboard Music Awards: as it happens and despite rather high stakes, the ceremony was able to deliver and hand out prizes in a way that was more or less even — insofar as both The Weeknd and Drake won big…. In fact, the Weeknd took home no less than 10 awards, which almost feels too good to be true. Meanwhile, Drake was quite rightfully named Artist of the decade. A fair claim if you take a step back and look at the man’s outstanding track record, one that only Elvis, Michael and the Beatles could rival at this point…

In case you were starting to stress out due to the fact that this story is rather light on women, rest assured: P!nk was also there to receive the icon award, along with a performance that featured her 9-year old daughter… And rising superstar Doja Cat nabbed the Top R&B Female artist, which only seems fitting. Meanwhile, the late Pop Smoke got honored 5 times, with his mother and brother accepting the trophies in his name. Rapper and activist Trae Tha Truth got himself the Change Maker award. Oh, and BTS won four trophies…

All in all, one could say that last night went without a hitch. Nice change of pace, isn’t it?