Thursday, Dec. 5, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Well, it was quite an evening at the 1996 Billboard Music Awards.
Madonna made her first public appearance since giving virgin birth for only the second time in recorded history.
Wayne Newton and Engelbert Humperdinck did the "Macarena."
The "Macarena" earned Los Del Rio the Single of the Year, an announcement that was met by a smattering of boos in the press room.
Mariah Carey was the only two-time winner, Celine Dion the only two-time loser, and she made us (the media, a nearly sellout crowd at the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts, a nationwide audience on Fox) pay dearly with a song to overdose by, "All By Myself."
There's no telling how many people Eric Carmen sent to their graves when he recorded it back in the '70s. Perhaps Carmen himself. Haven't heard a peep out of him since.
Toni Braxton won the award for R&B Single of the Year ("You're Makin' Me High/Let It Flow") and the unofficial prize for gown of the year (a skintight yellow number with built-in chill indicators).
She also was the evening's most prolific thanker (God, mom, dad, producer, record company, Billboard magazine, MTV, VH1, BET and, last but not least, her fans. "I couldn't have done it without you," she said).
This year's show also marked the return of New Edition, including Bobby Brown and every past and present member but Ralph Tresvant, whose mother died. The group opened the broadcast with a performance taped earlier outside the Hard Rock hotel-casino, then stopped by the press room in the Aladdin convention area to chat.
After dispensing with the niceties, a reporter dared ask the occasionally volatile Brown about his troubles with the law, which precipitated this exchange:
Brown: "Oh, c'mon, shut up. Ask a real question."
Reporter: "I don't want to make this is an issue..."
Brown: "It's not an issue till you make it an issue."
Reporter: "I'm trying to be light about it..."
Brown: "Next question."
Before the reporter could continue, thereby putting his face in extreme danger, someone else asked the next question.
Speaking of questions, there was a premium on idiotic ones.
Such as this one to R. Kelly, who won R&B Artist of the Year: "Who's your designer?"
And this one to Daisy Fuentes, who presented the Single of the Year award with Newton and Humperdinck and joined them in the "Macarena": "Who's your designer?"
And this one to Carmen Electra, an award presenter and Jenny McCarthy's successor on the MTV show "Singled Out": "Who's your designer?"
Since we're on a wardrobe tangent, black seemed to be the sartorial choice of most of the men, with an abundance of leather. Tony Rich, who won New Artist of the Year, was clad in cowhide from shoulders to shoes. Velvet was also in vogue, as demonstrated en masse by the members of All-4-One (red and blue blazers, black trousers) and New Edition, each of whom sported matching black velvet outfits with a gold-beaded leopard coming off the left shoulder and extending down the breast. (Brown, curiously, concealed his with a knee-length black suede coat.)
OK, enough Mr. Blackwell, upon whose list Dishwalla, which won Rock Track of the Year for "Counting Blue Cars," will surely appear if he happened to catch the show. Their wardrobe was an advertisement for thrift-store couture. But all in all, they seemed like a nice group of leisure-suited guys.
And now, an observation gleaned from a behind-the-scenes vantage at this seventh annual awards show:
Photo graphic
Photographers are animals (but you probably already knew that). Their jockeying for position during the pre-show celebrity walk was not unlike the carp at the Lake Mead Marina fighting for popcorn.
Standing behind ropes near the "talent check-in" tent, outside the Aladdin Theatre, they would go apoplectic at a celebrity sighting. As there were a lot of sightings, there was a lot of apoplexy.
"Weird" Al Yankovic, Carrot Top, ZZ Top, Dishwalla, James Edward Olmos, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen (separately and with Pauly Shore), Pauly Shore (separately and with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen), Merril Bainbridge, Keith Sweat, Antonio Sabato Jr., Carlos Santana, Celine Dion and Tony Rich all relented to having their pictures popped.
This is what it sounded like, a wretched symphony of voices calling for the same subject.
"Celine, Celine, Celine. Would you look this way, Celine? Celine, would you look here?"
"Tiffani, Tiffani,"
"Hi," said Tiffani.
"Tiffani, Tiffani, Tiffani, Tiffani, Tiffani. Turn this way, one second. Wait, wait, wait."
Tiffani: "OK, OK, OK."
When Bainbridge took her turn, no one recognized her. It took a Fox publicist's pronouncement ("Merril Bainbridge") to finally set them off.
"Merril, Merril, Merril. One second, Merril."
Of course, photographers are never satisfied. If it's not one thing, it's another. Either the star they're shooting isn't standing in front of them long enough, or they're not posing correctly.
And they get testy with one another, too, as lions will when they're vying for the same piece of meat.
"I had him in my frame and you called him and he moved," one said to another during Santana's walk.
"Oh, Jesus, break out the violin," replied the other.
'Toni, Toni, Toni'
And now, an explanation about the apparent discrepancy concerning Braxton, who is wearing a dark gown in the Accent cover photo but is described as wearing a yellow gown earlier in this story.
Answer: She changed outfits between the time she left the stage and turned up in the press area, where she announced that she has taken up kick boxing and can't get a date. Do you suppose there's a connection?
Braxton's Q&A with the media followed a pattern throughout the evening. The celebrities would leave the Aladdin Theatre after they'd done their thing and meet the press in the hotel's convention area, where the media watched the show on TV monitors in various rooms.
With few exceptions (Madonna, Mariah), they filed through one after the other. It was conveyer-belt smooth, but it was also at the expense of the show itself. The TV monitors were lowered in order to conduct the interviews, and as a result, the working media listened to ZZ Top while Madonna gave her Artistic Achievement Award acceptance speech inside the theatre.
They turned up the volume just in time to hear the end of her speech. "No matter what choice I make in my career," she said, "it's about the music. It's always been about the music. Thank you."
The Associated Press quoted as her saying that she was reluctant to attend the show because she didn't want to spend much time away from her 2-month-old daughter, Lourdes.
"But then they said that Tony Bennett was going to give it to me, and I said, 'All right, she won't miss me for a few more hours.'"
It was the same when Alanis Morissette received her Artist of the Year award. While she was giving her prerecorded acceptance speech from Japan during the telecast, the media was listening to All-4-One on the podium.
More Dion
And while Carey was stiffing the press after winning two awards, Dion was indulging them after losing in two categories (Artist of the Year and Single of the Year).
"I'm happy," she said. "I'm happy to be here, especially when an artist gets a chance to perform."
Awards are fine, Dion said, but performing is her sustenance.
"Singing is my life. It's all I know. There's nothing like standing up on stage and having the audience ask for more."
The irony of the day came at the beginning, at the window where the various media outlets pick up their press credentials. When representatives of Billboard magazine stepped up to claim theirs -- remember, this was the Billboard Music Awards -- they weren't on the list.
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