Celine Dion Saved the Billboard Music Awards

The Billboard Music Awards is where you can have all your worst suspicions about today’s pop music confirmed. The biggest current stars seemed disposable as they performed in Las Vegas Sunday night: Drake let waterworks replace showmanship as he rapped in the middle of the Bellagio’s fountain; Lorde took the concept of a fake karaoke bar to its least exciting conclusion; Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran—felt like a satire on the overrating of white male mediocrity. Still, hosts Ludacris and Vanessa Hudgens pantomimed breathlessness throughout the night. Each muddled performance, we were told, was “epic.”