Despite the last musical award show that disgraced American pop culture, the  2013 American Music Awards cleaned up the mess of the earlier 2013 MTV Video Music Awards with crazy amazing performances on a beautiful LA night, Nov. 24.

Let’s be real; Miley Cyrus (whose eyebrows are back to their natural color) is THE talk of the town. It’s almost not news that there is a daily headline made about the 20-year-old. Thankfully during her performance she wasn’t being practically dry humped by a man 15 years her senior, (I’m talking about the one and only Robin Thicke) and she sang her chart topping “Wrecking Ball” extremely well. I must say though, Miley might as well have been naked, because her skimpy white garments all but barely covered anything, and you could also almost see right through them, so what’s the point? Just asking.

Moving on to another great performance, that of Imagine Dragons all I have to say is “WOW.” The entire time lead singer Dan Reynolds rocked the stage my jaw was dropped. He began with the  the band’s current most popular song, “Demons,” but after the first chorus, the band beat tribally on huge drums all around switching the beat to their even more popular song, “Radioactive.” As if the cool transition between the hit songs wasn’t cool enough, Reynolds sang with every fiber in his body, truly transforming the performance into one of the night’s best.

All of the performances of the evening were spectacular, including Justin Timberlake’s. I think he’s one of the best artists of our time, honestly. One Direction also ruled their recital of “Story of My Life.” Each member of the band aced his solo, despite a small (And when I say small I mean VERY MINOR) voice crack at the end from 19-year-old Harry Styles. After the unimportant flaw in his solo, Styles seemed in a bad mood the rest of the evening, but maybe it was also because his reported lady friend, 18-year-old Kendall Jenner, totally friend-zoned him on the red carpet to E News.

Speaking of Harry’s lady friends, his ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift, was actually very civilized and proper the entire evening. It was the first award show she didn’t throw shade at her ex since their split early in the year. My opinion of present day Taylor Swift varies all the time. My biggest problems with her are the way she treats her exes, and how much her music genre has changed from her bubbly and curly country songs to now-a-day dubstep pop-ish stuff. But, my opinions have been moved toward the best after a very humble acceptance speech she gave after winning one of four AMA awards that night. She said something along the lines of her being thankful she doesn’t have to write thinking of a specific genre, and how she can just write songs how she feels them, and it totally gave me a better perspective.

The stunning, cute and vivacious Ariana Grande pulled out the win for “Best New Artist” and with her phenomenal execution of her song “Tattooed Heart” proved just why she received the award. She has an absolutely incredible range, that of a young Mariah Carrey, or dare I say it, a young Whitney Houston. She deserved the award 100 percent and I wholeheartedly am excited to see where her music career will take her. With pipes like hers, she’ll be tearing up the charts sooner or later. (More than she already has that is.)