That November in Berlin

There was this moment in 2009 when MTV was still enough of a thing that they’d fly everyone to Berlin for the Europe Music Awards and somehow manage to book Katy Perry, Green Day, and Shakira on the same stage at the O2 World. Looking back, it feels like a specific collision of pop culture moments that could only have happened then—not early enough to be retro, not recent enough to matter, but exactly at the point where everything felt possible if you were paying attention.

I remember the buzz around it, that strange competitive energy MTV awards always had back then. The artists themselves felt like the entire landscape of what was happening in music—Green Day still mattered as punk, Katy Perry was the reigning pop starlet, Shakira was inexplicably huge. It was the last moment before everything fractured into streaming and playlists and nobody agreed on what actually mattered anymore.

The weird thing was that getting tickets meant entering these strange contests and giveaways, the kind where they’d ask you ridiculous questions like who you’d rather sleep with, which always felt vaguely embarrassing and honest in equal measure. That was the internet back then—crude and unfiltered but still somehow charming about it. Now everything’s too careful.

Berlin itself was the right choice for this. The city had that energy then, felt like something was happening there. The venue, the artists, the moment—it all made sense. You’d see photos and clips afterward of people actually having fun at this thing, not performing fun for their phones. There’s something lost in that.

I never made it to that one. Too far, too much friction to actually go. But I remember it happening, remember the particular flavor of that week when it was the biggest thing, and then it was over. MTV faded pretty quietly after that. Now these awards barely register. Sometimes you see them trending and you don’t even notice because nothing’s surprising anymore.