Oh, MTV. The network that pretends it still likes music. In an attempt to remain “cool”, each year MTVu puts on Powder blue download.com/ontv/woodieawards/2009/”>The Woodie Awards, an awards show that recognizes breaking talent in the world of music. My experience at the Woodies was not a pleasant one overall, but it had its bright moments. I separate the night in my mind into two parts: the performances, and the presentations. The former was so infinitely better than the latter it’s actually comical. Due to a probable press embargo until they air, I can’t really yet say who won what,  (and if you really want to know, I’m sure you can search Twitter), but suffice to say I was disappointed by most of the winners.

Let’s start with the positives. The opening performance of last night was Matt and Kim’s “Lessons Learned” with the help of some stripping back up singers (one of whom was my freshman year roommate!). This was a take on their amazing music video for the song. I will never quite understand how they keep those gigantic smiles on their faces for the entirety of every performance I’ve ever seen them do. It’s mind blowing.

Next up was Passion Pit . I really enjoy Passion Pit’s electro take on disco and I think their songs are really catchy and fun to dance to. Which is why it breaks my heart that their lead singer just cannot sing live. It would honestly sound better if they just didn’t have vocals in their live sets.

Death Cab for Cutie is a band that I’ve had a “meh” relationship with for awhile. Not that I have anything in particular against their music. I just think that I may have missed that phase in high school where I cried into my pillow every night with Transatlanticism as my soundtrack. Having said that, their performance was great. They played “Meet Me at the Equinox” from the Twilight soundtrack, which was pretty good–but then they played crowd favorite “Sound of Settling” which even I got a little nostalgic hearing.

The Dead Weather was the last act to go on and they killed it. The Dead Weather has been getting a lot of backlash from the music community as just another Jack White vanity project, and perhaps it is. However, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart’s vocals combined with his created something pretty unique I think. She’s pretty badass and I’m pretty sure everyone in the audience wanted to get down with her after the show. Plus the band pulls off the old fashioned goth/80s punk aesthetic excellently.

And let’s not forget to give credit to Diplo, who DJ’d beautifully throughout the evening. Honestly, if he had just been DJ’ing the whole night, I would have been happy. It’s so nice to see a DJ who can span so many genres and actually beat-match and not just play remixes and pretend like they are beat-matching (guilty).

On the other hand, the presentations actually made me want to kill myself. Every single person acted as though they had never seen a teleprompter before in their lives. Also, I’m not sure it would have helped even if they were all perfectly read, because the writing was beyond awful. The jokes were so bad that I don’t think one person laughed all night. Also, for the record, Pete Wentz (not that anyone cares about him anymore) looked like he’d been hitting the hard stuff a little…too hard. Also, Leighton Meester and Cyndi Lauper presented together, which could have been totally awesome. But then Cyndi Lauper made an awkward but totally validated joke about how MTV doesn’t play music anymore. Then the teleprompter tried to make her say some stupid “girls just wanna have fun” line, which was not well-received by Cyndi. She just stood there looking horribly pissed off while Leighton said her lines for her.