Jackson Tribute to Kick Off MTV Music Video Awards
Janet Jackson will kick off the show Sunday night with a tribute to her late brother. Michael Jackson’s death on June 25 was soon followed by the BET Awards (where Janet Jackson also appeared), but the King of Pop was more closely aligned with MTV, the music network.
Though MTV dragged its feet at first in showing the music videos of black artists, the network’s meteoric rise in the 1980s came in tandem with Jackson’s, whose music videos such as “Thriller” and “Bad” set the standard for the form.
The VMAs are familiar ground for the family. Janet Jackson has won nine VMAs. Michael Jackson famously opened the 1994 VMAs by kissing his then-wife, Lisa Marie Presley.
MTV will also premiere the trailer for “This Is It,” the documentary about Jackson’s preparations to hold 50 concerts in London.
“There’s obviously lots of emotion around Michael and the memory of Michael, but I think it’s going to be a pretty celebratory kind of night all around,” said Dave Sirulnick, the show’s executive producer and vice president of production at MTV. “It’s all about that balance.”
September 13th, 2009 at 10:13 pm