via ABC

Justin Bieber at last year's American Music Awards.

​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 2011 American Music Awards, the annual salute to the most popular popular music that exists in the American wild this year. While Lady Gaga and Adele and Beyoncé are absent, this year's show apparently has one performance that will cost $500,000 to pull off, as well as a David Guetta/Nicki Minaj outing that is heavy—heavy in the weight sense, not in the "societal import" sense because c'mon we're talking about King Of Eurogloss David Guetta here—and appearances by Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy (sigh) Perry, Kelly Clarkson, and other notables from the Hot 100. Come join us for the next three hours, won't you?

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​"Drummer Boy," another song from the forthcoming Justin Bieber Yuletide album Under The Mistletoe, has made its way online; a rework of the classic hymn "The Little Drummer Boy," it's been retrofitted with sharper drums and rap verses to make it sound like it could be dropped into top-40 stations' playlists at any time, and not just during their annual "24 Hours Of Christmas" marathons. Busta Rhymes, our Best Male Vocalist in New York, lends a verse that yanks the holiday-season staple out of its staid manger-in-Jerusalem setting and into late 2k11, sending out love to his 678,000-plus Twitter followers (and, one presumes, the nearly 14 million tracking the Biebs' every 140-character bleat) and informing listeners that he still uses a Blackberry. (For his part, Bieber—with a deeper voice—does advise his listeners to give to charity on his somewhat adept rap verse.) The song, and a transcription of Busta's verse, after the jump. And yes, rhyming "off" with "off" does take some points, er, off.

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​This year's crop of holiday-themed records includes albums by the likes of She & Him, Tony Bennett, and Scott Weiland. But the one that will probably emerge as sales champ (or at least get mentioned by a lot of people on Twitter) is Under The Mistletoe, the first seasonally minded release from the still-quite-popular Justin Bieber. The Biebs claims that his artistic vision was fueled by having Christmas cookies available in the studio while he was recording the record—in August—although he should probably cop to listening to Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" at least one or 56 times, because the first single, "Mistletoe," could very easily be retitled "I'm Yours... At Christmas." Listen below.

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Justin Bieber and Ludacris: Congratulations. A lot of people watched your video.

​On August 28, MTV will throw the 2011 installment of its Video Music Awards, honoring achievements in the art form that used to make up the majority of its programming. While it's all too tempting to note the irony that the channel has been marginilizing videos in favor of longer-form programming for nearly two decades now, the fact is that the music video as a pop culture force is in good health these days, with or (more often) without MTV's support.

The internet, broadly, has helped revive excitement around the music video, but credit can be specifically given to YouTube. The music video probably reached its nadir of interest and influence around 2005, just before the site exploded into popular consciousness and made streaming video more accessible both to watch and to upload. Not only do major-label stars finally have a place for their big-budget videos to be disseminated in a mass way resembling that of MTV's heyday; new artists have an unprecedented universal portal for their own low-budget clips, a development that's launched a constellation of stars from Justin Bieber to Kreayshawn and Pomplamoose.

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At his New York City appearance today, Justin Bieber "decided to go outside of the store to acknowledge the fans that could not come inside to the event," ABC News reports, only to be attacked by "an unidentified man." Some lucky videographers (with NSFW mouths!) were taking in the scene from a high window across the street and even from above the tween screams were deafening. Then it got wild! If you look closely around the 21-second mark, you can make out a shift in the action as police run to rescue Bieber from the crazed "old man," as Bieber reportedly starts swinging to fight back. ABC says Bieber is okay, but "shaken up" -- human contact can be hard for a robot.

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​Good news: The music industry is starting to sell more records in 2011. Bad news: They're Now compilations and Justin Bieber remix records. The latter takes Billboard's top spot from the former this week, with Never Say Never: The Remixes selling a brisk 161,000 copies, and why not, since Never Say Never: The Movie is such a hoot. At #2, we see a continued robust Grammy bounce . . . for Mumford and Sons. Yes, that mega-rasping hoedown clusterfuck with Bob Dylan won people over. Imagine if they'd won Album of the Year.

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Oh dear. Here we have Justin Bieber, shot and killed in a police face-off, ending his multi-episode CSI run as Jason McCann and sending waves of fear and anger through his devoted fandom. During last night's episode, Justin's troubled character was caught setting a bomb by Detective Stokes and his team. It seemed like he was ready to surrender, but at the last moment he pulled out a gun and fired the first shot. Obviously the scene didn't end well. Millions of teenage girls slumped off to bed to dream away the suggestion of mortality in their pop-god:

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​I should start by stating by own critical bias. When last week I told my younger, Bieber-loving sister that I'd be seeing Justin Bieber's 3D movie on Friday night at Union Square, she told me straight up that if I were to write a negative review she would kick me out of the family. Still, neither this devotion, nor a colleague's warning that she felt more afraid when interviewing Bieber fans than at any point during the Gathering of the Juggalos, prepared me for what I was about to face when I bought my opening-night ticket for Never Say Never 3D.

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Verily, he is a Renaissance Man. Pic by Rebecca Smeyne.

​Perhaps you were unaware of Voice critic/Twitter celebrity/Hipster Puppies impresario Christopher R. Weingarten's sideline as a noise-punk drummer of alarming ferocity, as anyone who saw Parts & Labor back in the day can attest. Well, during last weekend's one-day-only Sequence of Waves art exhibit at an old Williamsburg convent, Chris performed a "duet" with that super-slowed-down version of Justin Bieber's "U Smile" that had the Internet going nuts for a few hours last year. We are now proud to offer the full 12-minute video of this performance: Watch one of his drumsticks basically disintegrate at around the 4:40 mark. Hopefully Justin will do a drum solo to an old P&L song as response -- this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. We'll be here all week!

At least one song on this record is really good!

​Gentlemen,

If I had to pick one example of hashtag rap that I liked more than any other, it would probably be Nicki Minaj's "And I just be coming off the top -- asbestos," from Young Money's "Bedrock," if only because of its somewhat feminist implications. The song reached No. 2 on the Hot 100! Surely that must represent some strike in favor of female sexual empowerment. (Or maybe radio listeners finally realized the charms of Lloyd, whose silky come-ons were also available on "Lay It Down," one of the many r&b songs from this year with which I had passionate, intense flings.)

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