Taylor Swift – I Knew You Were Trouble.
American Music Awards
Such a good first performance for Taylor to promote the single to the public! Obviously the best part is the costume change during the middle and just how dark Taylor acts. I love the backing vocals and the emphasized dubstep. The reason this is only at #10 is because I found Tay went flat on more than a couple of notes during the performance, but great nonetheless.
Ke$ha – Die Young
American Music Awards
Ke$ha has been on-point with all of her performances of Die Young! I love that she is dancing all the time and her voice sounds great! I chose this one because I absolutely love the drum breakdown during the middle and it just makes it so epic! Love Ke$ha, but the girl really needs to invest in a pair of butt pads, other than that her amazing performances make me forget all about her John Travolta days.
And the #1 video of 2012 is obviously Wide Awake! This probably comes as no surprise, but even without factoring in my stanship, this is STILL the best video. I love the story! I love hidden imagery within the video! I love the message it provides. It is the best video of the year and will probably be one of my favourite videos of all time.
I know I will probably get backlash for including this performance, but once I get past the two bad notes in the first chorus, I love the entire thing. The second verse, the bridge, and the ad-libs during the ending are amazing! Much much much better than the Billboard Awards performance!
Carly Rae Jepsen – This Kiss
Late Show with David Letterman
Carly's performances of This Kiss are way better than Call Me Maybe. Plus she looks so incredibly hot for this one. She just sounds so good here to me, it is one of the performances during the past year where her voice isn't extremely raspy and crackly. And obviously, the note at the end during the line "LIKE THI-IS!" sounds goddess-like because she always hits that note perfectly! Also, the way she taps her toes when she performs is so cute!
GO CANADA!