MTV News’ Jim Cantiello squeezes a year’s worth of WTFs into one minute.
By Gil Kaufman






Lady Gaga at the 2009 Video Music Awards


Photo: Jeff Kravitz/ FilmMagic

Summing up 2009 in one minute is kind of like trying to convince Lady Gaga to go to dinner in flats, jeans, a ratty T-shirt and no makeup: virtually impossible, but so totally worth trying.

This was, after all, a year that began with the inauguration of the real Man From Hope, the country’s first black president, Barack Obama, who took office promising lots of change and a whole new attitude in Washington. And while he hasn’t yet gotten us out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is still working on pulling us out of a gargantuan economic tailspin, we can at least take solace in the fact that those old fogies the Jonas Brothers were replaced by another New Kid on the Block, riot-causing tweener Justin Bieber.

At least that’s how MTV News’ Jim Cantiello sees things, and he should know, because he spent the year summing up just about every major event — from the inauguration to “American Idol” and the VMAs — in, you guessed it, 60 seconds or less.

We waved goodbye to a lot of celebs this year: DJ AM, Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett and, of course, one of the most shocking passings in recent memory, the June death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Reality got extra real, and at times surreal, over the past 12 months, as we watched America’s most hated couple, the Gosselins, break up in public, fretted for a few hours over whether Balloon Boy was in his dad’s backyard spaceship, and couldn’t get enough of the myriad remixes of Christian Bale’s F-bomb-tastic on-set rant.

Our short attention spans were tried by the ultimate ADD accessory, Twitter, which is where we first found out about everything this year, until some celebs (Miley Cyrus, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne) realized we were learning too much and pulled the plug on their accounts.

It was also a year of comebacks (Britney, Whitney), fake-outs (Eminem getting a backwards greeting from Bruno) and redemption (the Mike Tyson documentary, “Tyson”). And while nobody was looking, Sandra Bullock become a box-office giant once again. While two of her flicks did surprisingly well, the real focus for most of the year was on the record-setting “Twilight” sequel, “New Moon,” and “Titanic” director James Cameron’s 3-D fantasia, “Avatar.”

On TV, “Project Runway” crashed, and Jay Leno dropped an atomic bomb on prime time when his five-nights-a-week talker sizzled for a few days and then flopped faster than an “American Pie” sequel. But the big news, of course, was “American Idol,” where new judge Kara DioGuardi didn’t totally ruin the show (but didn’t really add anything either) and sometimes made it run way over schedule. The soft-spoken kid from Arkansas, Kris Allen, won out over season-long favorite Adam Lambert, the flamboyant crooner who has since announced the obvious (he’s gay), shocked middle America at the AMAs (think men on leashes, man-on-man kissing) and beat his rival on the Billboard charts. Oh, and loopy judge Paula Abdul left the show,
announcing her departure on — wait for it — Twitter, of course.

Despite being a complete unknown when the year started, “Britain’s Got Talent” runner-up Susan Boyle took the gold on the charts, as her debut album rang up nearly 2.5 million sales in the U.S. in its first month alone. Otherwise, though, the year (and the charts) belonged to country cutie Taylor Swift, who grabbed nearly every award there was, including the one Kanye West tried to take from her at the VMAs. MTV’s Woman of the Year was Lady Gaga, who brought art and pop music together with theatrical masks, booty shorts and awards-show performances that featured blood, broken bottles and bubble dresses.

On top of that, in the sports world, Olympic hero Michael Phelps was caught smoking a bong months after winning a record eight gold medals, and formerly squeaky-clean golf legend Tiger Woods was caught allegedly cheating on his wife with more than a dozen other women.

Top that, 2010.

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Continued here:
2009 In 60 Seconds: Relive Lady Gaga’s Breakout, ‘New Moon’ Fever, More

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