When the location of the 15th Headies Award was announced in March, it was met with lots of criticism from people, mostly with concerns about why an award meant to celebrate Nigerians will be held outside of the country. In response to these criticisms, Ayo Animashaun, CEO of Smooth Promotions stated that people will thank him later for that decision.
“I always resist the urge to explain myself because those who won’t get it won’t get it. All y’all who don’t understand why the Headies is holding in Atlanta this year will thank me later.”
Looking at the ratings of the award by viewers, we doubt if there are many things to thank Ayo Animashaun for.
With a look into how the 15th Headies Award went, these are the things we feel could have been better, and those who were actually better.
What Could Have Been Better At The 15th Headies Award
Accountability with time – It is a stereotype that Nigerians do not know how to stick to time and the delay exported with the 15th Headies Award showed that, especially in how the show was organized. Like a two-hour delay was nothing, the Headies also did not see any reason to apologize for the delay.
In their defense, they quickly whipped up a half-baked fashion show to keep their audience entertained.
The Red Carpet Host – The Red Carpet should not be so hard to coordinate for someone who knows what they are doing.
Apart from the red carpet space being so small, there was just one host as well which led to guests having to queue at the red carpet. As if that was not bad enough, the host also did not seem like he had control of the red carpet. He seemed clueless while he continued asking every guest what brought them to the award show.
Terrible Hosting – The host of the show was a total disaster. We have never seen a host as uninterested as Anthony Anderson at the 15th Headies Award.
All night, all he did was made tasteless jokes while also not missing the chance to be condescending with most of his jokes. Apart from that, he successfully messed up most of the names and still made more jokes about that as well. He then crowned it all with a jab at Headies, insinuating that the award was taking too long and he wanted to go home.
Osas Ighodaro on the other hand was just there acting as a substitute for her co-host. One would have expected that she would take charge but she was not able to. To be fair to her, she did laugh at some of Anthony’s terrible jokes and covered up for a couple of flaws with the hosting.
What Was Better At The 15th Headies Award
Better Performances – Coming from the point of mediocre performances over the years to some of the performances we witnessed this year at the 15th Headies Award, there has been an improvement.
The audience was thrilled to have a night of great music with a live band supporting the artists, and delivering decent live performances.
Some of the artists that thrilled at the award are BNXN, Asake, Lojay, and Ruger.
Better Acceptance Speeches – There was a major improvement in this aspect than with any other aspect of the award, and it is safe to say this is the best we’ve witnessed so far.
First of all, I want to thank God. He’s the reason I’m here. He’s the reason I’ve come this far.
“Big Thanks to the Headies. Big shoutout to my team, most especially, my partner and my manager, Alexander Okeke, and for the crew and the technical guys working tirelessly around the clock to make the show look good, and for everyone out here supporting Afrobeat.” – Olamide
Most of the artists were honest with their speeches, and we saw the excitement as well from first-time winners such as Goya Menor and Ibejii.
Promoting Afrobeats – Whenever we say Afrobeats to the world, taking an award that honors the genre of music to an international stage is one of the things we mean and the 15th Headies Award was successful with that.
