Britney, Britney, Britney. For the days leading up to the 25th annual MTV Video Music Awards, which took place Sunday night at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, MTV breathlessly promoted Britney Spears' appearance to ^ shuw Not to sing, merely to appear At the Video

Music Awards appearances are everything.

It made no difference that through 2007, she had n*veTwon an MT Widen Music Award. She appeared: two minutes of recorded comedy with Jonah Hill and another live minute walking onstage and introducing the show, with just one fumble. Shortly afterward, after 16 previous nominations, she won the award for Best Female Video for "Piece of Me,” a song that taunts the tabloids she has served so well. Did she seize her moment to treat the award as a vindication? No. She said she was “speechless” and simply thanked God, her children and her fans. Later, she won Best Pop Video, added her record company to the list and managed to say, “This means a lot.” When she won the night's top award, Video of the Year, she calmly said she was “ in shock” and thanked her fans again.

Spears had already been upstaged by Rihanna, wearing an outfit of feathers and leather as she sang about insanity in the show's first big production number, “Disturbia.” Later, Spears' onetime rival Christina Aguilera strutted, teasing and knocking men around in her new single, “Keeps Gettin' Better *

Teenagers' loyalties have moved to the Jonas Brothers, who sang “Love Bug” on the Paramount back lot with screaming girls running down a streetscape to get closer, and to Tokio 1 lotel, the German band whose fans voted them Best New Artist by text messaging. As host, Russell Brand, a manic, intelligent English comedian, injected the show with politics (pro-Barack Obama), raunch and philosophical musings. Kanye West had the show's anticlimactic finale: a new love song in which he made the mistake of singing rather than rapping.

On this awards show, the awards have barely mattered. The draw of the awards is the collision between all the artifice money can buy -- hair, makeup, designer clothes, lights, scripts, lip-synching -- and the real time demands of performing without retakes. Winners are rapidly forgotten, while one-time-only stunts, mishaps and freak-show oddities are remembered and endlessly replayed. The reality on this reality show is pop stardom in the music-video era.

MTV wants its stars to be young, sexy song-and-dance prodigies with designer tastes and a flair for cross-promotion: the song that plugs the movie that plugs the soft drink and the car Playing along, stars time their latest metamorphoses for the MTV awards cameras. Yet while MTV loves hard-working careerists, it is happiest when those troupers go a little crazy - or more than a little, allowing for multiple comebacks. Michael Jackson served MTV that way in the 1990s; now, it is Britney Spears' turn.