Taylor Swift vs the king of pop

The American Music Awards announced its nominations earlier today and country music's reining princess, Taylor Swift, faces her stiffest competition for artist of the year against the king of pop, Michael Jackson.

In a typically year, Taylor, nominated for a total of six awards, would be a lock for the award in the category that includes Lady Gaga, Eminem and Kings of Leon for no other reason than fans get an online vote and Taylor has made her career in part due to the large online presences of her fans.

There's no doubt many of those fans will flock to the AMA's Web site to vote for Taylor, but she faces an uphill battle against the man who almost bought down the Internet when he died unexpectedly over the summer.

Jackson's nomination for the award, and four others, is ridiculous. It's highly doubtful all of his nominations came as a result of "This is it," a single released Monday. Instead, his nominations come as a direct result of his death.

How lame is it the American Music Awards is willing to honor an artist who didn't release any music this year until yesterday with its biggest award? The artist of the year, and every other award for that matter, shouldn't go to an artist whose only contribution to society this year was the massive amounts of media coverage his death received.

Music awards should be about music. Not about honoring legacies or lifetime achievements. If the AMA's want to acknowledge Michael Jackson's lasting contributions to the music world, they should do so with a special award presented to his family and be done with it.

Allowing him, and his memory, to compete directly with artists who actually produced music this year is ridiculous and is unfair to artist who would have been nominated in his place, presumably Beyonce in the best artist category.

The awards air November 22.