The Billboard Awards show started out strong with Bruno Mars and went swiftly downhill from there until the very end when Prince blew the roof off. I fast forwarded through most of the rest of the awfulness.

Highlights included Kid Rock sleazing out on the stage to congratulate all the lip-syncers, Justin Bieber getting booed for saying he's a serious artist while accepting the "Milestone" award, Madonna treating Will.I.Am like her personal valet, and some dude called Miguel who tried to leap across some fans to another stage and fell short, drop kicking one poor young woman in the head then landing on another with his crotch and crashing her neck and head into the edge of the stage (watch). I was worried that someone had been seriously injured. I thought he was almost kinda good up until that.

Prince finally came on and put the show out of its misery, accepting the "Icon" award with a raw performance that paid tribute to other icons including Hendrix, Edgar Winter and the Stones with a rockified medley of "Let's Go Crazy" and the Satisfaction-like "Fix Ur Life Up." Prince does a dead on Mick Jagger.

If there's still pop music ten or fifteen years from now, that Bruno Mars kid is one to watch. He was recently featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and has an interesting life story and work ethic. I sampled some of his tunes and he seemed a little too pop for me, but his performance last night shows he's got great potential.