Winner – Katy Perry – Despite my attempts to have Lady Gaga win this battle of the pop queens with her fine but no more and no less that fine “Applause”, she couldn’t do it. And while both Perry and Gaga were pretty lame at the VMA’s there is no discounting one crystal clear fact: Katy Perry has the most popular song in the country. How does “Roar” compare, I don’t know, “Teenage Dream” no, wait, how does it compare to “I Kissed A Girl”? Yup, I think we can all agree that the word is yuck. It doesn’t even work as girl power for the brownies: it is too solipsistic. But what it absolute did do was reach the # 1 position on the top ten singles.
Loser – Randall’s Island – If it can be proven that the organizers were setting up triage tents (I saw a few but not so much I thought I’d wandered into a triage, and if Bloomberg isn’t around to collect his $4.50 per ticket, there is no doubt they will have serious problems cutting a deal with the Island again. And, despite the morons at Gov’s Ball, who for some obscure reason had a festival in early June and got nailed by a storn and had to reseed the entire island, making up for it, I would be surprised if they got signed up for a repeat. Except, greed, man… right? Either way, Randall’s Island had a crappy year for music fests.