Billboard Music Awards Finalists Announced

The BMAs, live on ABC on May the 18th

The Billboard Music Awards started in 1989 and were held in December every year until 2006. The 2007 ceremony was canceled for various reasons, and plans to bring it back in 2008 fell through. The BMAs came back in May 2011.

Unlike other awards, the Billboard Music Awards are based on chart success: number of downloads, total sales and total airplay. Past award winners include Madonna, Michael Jackson, the Spice Girls, Elton John, Mariah Carey and Prince.

This year's finalists were announced earlier today, and the ceremony, which will air live on May the 18th, will honour the year's most successful acts in 40 different categories.

Bizarrely, Lana Del Rey's "Born To Die" is up for "Top Rock Album" together with Lorde's "Pure Heroine" and others. I must have grown up with the wrong concept of rock music. But this nomination will definitely please wild child Lana.

Born To Die - The Paradise Edition [Explicit] [+digital booklet]

Other strange inclusions? "Safe And Sound" by Capital Cities and Lorde's "Royals" are up for "Top Rock Song". Have you people heard these tracks? I'm sure there's some criteria behind Billboard's decisions, but I fail to understand it. Capital Cities and Lorde are also nominated for "Top Rock Artist".

Pure Heroine 

"Top Christian Album" and "Top Christian Song" will definitely be the most talked-about awards of the night. Not.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Eminem, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé were nominated in all 40 categories, but, in reality, Imagine Dragons and Lorde lead with 12 categories each.

Competition is tough though; Eminem, Bruno Mars and Justin Timberlake will have to fight it out for "Top Male Artist", while "Top Female Artist" is filled with extremely successful ladies: Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Lorde.

Lady Gaga is up for three awards: "Top Dance/Electronic Artist", "Top Dance/Electronic Album" (ARTPOP) and "Top Dance/Electronic Song" (Applause).

ARTPOP [Explicit] 

If you are interested in all 40 categories, go here.

Billboard's Ex Editorial Director Speaks Out

Bill Werde, ex Editorial Director of Billboard Magazine, gave us all a lesson in online celebrity last night, when he took to his Tumblr account to clarify a few things regarding certain shady bloggers who have somehow managed to spread their lies on the Internet.

These bloggers have been writing bashful entries about music artists, particularly Lady Gaga, for one year, and no one paid any attention to them or their glorified fan site until more credible media outlets started reporting their stories, even if they had absolutely no way to know if these were legit or not. Embarrassingly, the New York Magazine had to edit one of their articles with a line that told their readers to not believe that story because they had zero proof that what it said was true, and that it was just "fictional gossip".

These people's only goal in life is, apparently, to try and ruin Lady Gaga's career. Now why would anyone be so obsessed with someone they don't know? How could a popstar hold such power over people? I suppose, if you're Lady Gaga, nothing should surprise you anymore. Her undeniable impact and quick rise to global superstardom has, for some reason, scared fans of other popstars.

These stories have been supported by the likes of Internet bully Perez Hilton and hate Tumblr pages such as Paws Down Little Monsters (which was created by, you guessed it, a Madonna fan).

I won't mention the blog these people write for nor their names, because that is exactly what they want. And well, apparently these people don't even exist.

In their bios they mention Universities that have never heard of them and use pictures from random people's Flickr accounts.

Buzzfeed has written a similar article about Lady Gaga hating bloggers who won't reveal themselves. It's all very sad stuff, and it makes you wonder why people don't focus on getting on with their own lives instead of polluting the World with such mindless rubbish.

Read the Buzzfeed article here.

To read Bill Werde's Tumblr entry, go here.