Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for YouTube
Eminem took home the Artist of the Year prize at the first YouTube Music Awards.
The website that unleashed Psy's "Gangnam Style" on the world forked over its first prizes for music clips on Sunday.
The brand-new YouTube Music Awards live-streamed from Pier 36 on Manhattan's lower East Side.
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The program, co-hosted by actor Jason Schwartzman and comedian/musician Reggie Watts, handed out six prizes and showcased performances by stars including Lady Gaga, Eminem, Arcade Fire, M.I.A. and Avicii.
YouTube's event instantly distinguished itself from all other music awards shows with a brilliant gimmick: The performers created what amounted to live music clips, some directed by the show's creative overseer, movie auteur Spike Jonze.
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Each artist performed on dramatic sets, employed elaborate back projections and featured costumed actors.
Arcade Fire staged a fantasy for "Afterlife," in which a depressed housewife broke free of her dank kitchen to roam through a wild forest before joining the band in a joyous dance. Lady Gaga countered her usual high style by sporting a dowdy flannel shirt, a trucker's cap and no makeup while performing her new ballad "Dope." Crying floridly, she delivered the song at the piano as a high-strung hymn to need.
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In between such insta-videos, Schwartzman and Watts vamped through shtick graced by only the vaguest script. Some winners were revealed through a treasure hunt, with one name hidden in a series of cakes.
Winners were decided by YouTube viewers. They included Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, who won for Breakthrough Video, ("Thrift Shop"), and Eminem (Artist of the Year).
Also acknowledged were YouTube-created artists like Lindsay Sterling for Video of the Year.
Arcade Fire's Win Butler interrupted the win for Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble," — just like Kanye West had intruded during her MTV Music Awards appearance. Butler insisted "Harlem Shake" should have gotten it.
Otherwise, the show had a freshness like no other award show. It came in just under 90 minutes. Oscars take note.
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