Over the course of 40 years, the MTV Video Music Awards have established themselves as the most influential and eagerly awaited event in the music industry. Although they still lack the prestige of the Grammys and despite the fact that the impact of their television channel pales every day in comparison to the rise of digital, triumphing on the MTV stage still grants a one-way ticket to international pop stardom. Aware of this, artists such as Madonna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus have saved their most dazzling and controversial shows for the occasion. It remains to be seen whether emerging stars such as Sabrina Carpenter, Karol G or Lisa will follow in their footsteps at the new edition to be held in the early hours of September 11-12, in S Fashion We review the most controversial moments in its history so that you can take note of how high the bar is. Will any of them dare to surpass it?
Madonna deflowers MTV
The Queen of Pop opened the first Video Music Awards in 1984 with a seminal and historic performance, which guaranteed the continuity and influence of the awards from then on. Dressed as a punk bride and descending from a giant cake, she shocked the audience with a hypersexual choreography to offer the first preview of an album that would come out a couple of months later. When she finished the song, her manager “was pale” and assured her that she had ruined her future. He was wrong. Like a Virgin It was the first major global success of his majestic career.
Lady Gaga and the carnivorous dress
Not content with having hung herself bloodied on the stage last year, the star of Bad Romance She decided to double her bet at the 2010 Video Music Awards. 18 kilos of Argentine red meat shaped Gaga’s most unforgettable look, made up of a dress made of skirt steaks, a matching headdress and a bag that she left in Cher’s hands while collecting her award. “I’m not a piece of meat,” she said about the symbolism of a piece strongly criticized by the animal rights organization PETA. A week earlier, the singer had appeared on the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan wearing a bikini also made of beef, so she thought of repeating the move in front of millions of viewers. The design, sewn by Argentine Franc Fernandez, passed through the hands of a taxidermist and today is preserved in perfect condition in his museum in Las Vegas. The influence of the look has led to it having its own page on Wikipedia.
He twerking by Miley Cyrus
Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Will Smith… The faces of astonishment in the stalls at the 2013 VMA’s spoke for themselves. The show full of erotic movements offered by Miley Cyrus to perform her hit song We Can’t Stopaccompanied by the already amortized Robin Thicke, left in shock to a public opinion that saw firsthand how the singer buried her status as a Disney star forever. “Embarrassing”, “rude”, “strip club worthy” and “worrying” are just some of the adjectives that the mainstream press dedicated to her. Cyrus acknowledged last year that she had to start going to therapy to manage all the hate that came her way. “I internalized some of the guilt and shame for years because of all the controversy it generated. Now that I am an adult, I realize how harshly I was judged. I was judged very harshly by adults as a child and now, as an adult, I realize that I would never judge a child that way,” she alleged in the British edition of Vogue magazine.
Kanye’s humiliation of Taylor Swift
“He’s an idiot.” The President of the United States was harsh when asked his opinion on the episode that shocked the country on September 13, 2009. The controversial rapper had embarrassed Barack Obama himself after he stormed onto the stage of the Video Music Awards, snatched Swift’s microphone and shouted to the audience that the award for Best Female Video of the Year should have gone to Beyoncé. Broken with grief after the boycott –MTV president Van Toffler found her “crying desperately in the dressing room next to her mother”–, the singer of “The Beatles” Love Story He managed to rebuild himself to the point of becoming the biggest pop phenomenon of the century, shattering all records in the music industry. Kanye, for his part, remains determined to be just “an idiot.”
Queen Madonna kisses her pop princesses
Considered by Rolling Stone magazine as the most scandalous moment in the history of the Video Music Awards – and by Stevie Nicks as the “most disgusting” – the Queen of Pop wanted to pay tribute to her celebrated performance of Like a Virgin 20 years earlier, with another golden page of pop culture: kissing her successors Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera dressed as brides. The production of the show made sure to boost sensationalism by showing a shot of a sad-faced Justin Timberlake, Britney’s ex-boyfriend, which left us without seeing the kiss to a Christina Aguilera who asked the network to re-edit the performance so as not to be left out. Although the original idea came from Madonna herself, the producers of MTV encouraged her gesture to give the ceremony the necessary spice after the previous edition was marked by sober tributes to the victims of the September 11 attacks. A curiosity: the chosen one to accompany Madonna and Britney was Jennifer Lopez, but the Bronx native backed out of the plan at the last minute because she was filming the movie. Shall we dance?
Michael and Lisa Marie’s forced kiss
As if they were a newly formed royal couple, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley – Elvis’ only daughter – publicly presented their newly certified marriage to the crazed subjects at the start of the 1994 gala. “Nobody thought this would last,” he said before planting a passionate and very long kiss on her. Lisa Marie’s discomfort was so visible that years later she confirmed that she did not want her then husband to even “touch” her, already immersed in a strong crisis. A few months later they divorced amid accusations that their relationship had only been a publicity stunt.
Britney’s python
Paying tribute to Salma Hayek Open until dawnBritney Spears shocked the audience by appearing with an albino python on stage during the performance of her single I’m A Slave 4 U in the 2001 edition. Her intention was to leave behind the innocent image of her first stage to show herself more sensual and transgressive and boy did she succeed. Although she recognizes that it is one of the favorite moments of her career, in her memoir The Woman In Me She confesses how scared she felt during the performance: “In my head I was saying, ‘Just sing, move your legs and sing. ‘ But what nobody knows is that while I was singing, the snake put its head right in front of my face and started sticking its tongue out at me.”
Beyoncé’s pregnancy
Before social media monopolized the most intimate announcements of our celebrities, even an awards gala could be a propitious setting to announce the imminent arrival of a baby. That must have been what Beyoncé thought, who took advantage of the 2011 gala to look at the camera, unbutton her glamorous jacket at the end of her performance of Love on top and revealing a budding belly. “I want you to feel the love that is growing inside me,” she said. Today, her firstborn, Blue Ivy, is already accompanying her as a dancer on her world tour.
The rage of Rage Against The Machine
In 2000, the rivalry between Rage Against The Machine and Limp Bizkit divided fans of the rock metal genre and the members of both bands, who hurled all kinds of insults at each other. A confrontation that was on the verge of crossing all limits when the latter won the award for Best Rock Video of the year. Tim Commerford, upset by the defeat of his video clip – directed by Michael Moore and which forced the doors of Wall Street to close due to the riots caused – showed his annoyance by climbing to the top of a structure that presided over the set to boycott the acceptance speech. Commerford ended up being arrested and spent a night in jail. What transpired later is that the leader of Rage Against The Machine, Zach de la Rocha, was so angry with his partner’s behaviour that it ended up being the trigger for him to dissolve the band a few weeks later.
The indiscretion of Diana Ros
The legendary vocalist of The Supremes was in charge of presenting the award for Best Hip-Hop Video in the 1999 edition. Along with her, other rappers such as Mary J. Blige and Lil Kim took the stage, the latter opting for a more than daring look for the occasion: a violet jumpsuit matching her wig that left her left breast exposed, covered only by a nipple cover. So daring was the neckline that Ross, live, did not hesitate to give his partner’s chest a little shake, which was received with cheers by those present.
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