The MTV Video Music Awards are back, and this year promises to be bigger and bolder than ever as stars get ready to walk the red carpet at the UBS Arena in Long Island, New York. Hosted by the always fierce Megan Thee Stallion, the night is set to celebrate the very best in music and showcase some truly unforgettable looks.
The 2024 VMAs will be a night of firsts and comebacks, with artists like Eminem taking the stage for the first time since 2017. Eminem will be opening the ceremony with a performance of a song from his No. 1 album, “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce).”
Katy Perry will also be making a comeback to the VMAs, and she is sure to wow the crowd with her signature stage presence. Perry will be honored with the Video Vanguard Award, which is a lifetime achievement award that recognizes a musician's impact on the music industry.
Of course, no VMAs ceremony is complete without a few surprises. This year, viewers can expect to see performances from a variety of artists, including Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, Anitta, GloRilla, Camila Cabello and KAROL G.
The VMAs have always been known for blending music's veterans with its rising stars, and this year is no exception, with first-time nominees like Sabrina Carpenter sharing the spotlight with heavyweights.
The 2024 MTV Video Music Awards will air live on Wednesday, September 11, at 8 p.m. ET across MTV's global footprint, including BET, CMT, VH1, Paramount Network and Univision.
The biggest night in music: VMAs turn 40
Gillmer, Paramount's president of Music, Music Talent, Programming & Events and Paramount+'s chief content officer, Music, has been around long enough to know that MTV, in its various iterations, hasn’t always embraced its history. “I lived through that era of, ‘We have to live in the here and now. We don't want to look to the past. It makes us look old and irrelevant.’ This VMAs is definitely not living in the past, but we're not necessarily afraid of the past, either,” he says. “I feel like we've pulled out all the stops, with arguably our best lineup ever.”
A Night to Remember: Iconic VMAs Moments
The VMAs have a long history of providing unforgettable moments. From Madonna's iconic wedding dress performance in 1984 to Britney Spears' infamous snake performance in 2001, the VMAs have always been a platform for artists to push boundaries and make history.
MTV's most scandalous moments
Over the course of 40 years, the MTV Video Music Awards have established themselves as the most influential and highly anticipated event in the music industry. Although it still lacks the prestige of the Grammys, and despite the fact that the impact of its TV channel’s hosting pales every day in the face of the rise of digital content, triumphing on the MTV stage is still a one-way ticket to international pop stardom. Aware of this, artists like Madonna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, or Miley Cyrus have saved their most epic and controversial shows for the occasion. In the absence of knowing if rising stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Karol G, or Lisa will follow in their footsteps on September 11, EL PAÍS reviews the most controversial appearances in MTV VMA history to give an idea of where the bar is set.
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 a first preview of an album that would be released a couple of months later. At the end of her performance, her manager apparently “looked pale” and assured Madonna that she had just ruined her career. He was wrong: Like a Virgin was the first big global hit of her majestic trajectory.
Not content with having hung herself, bloodied, on stage the previous year, the star decided to double down at the 2010 Video Music Awards. Eighteen kilos of Argentine red meat went into shaping Gaga’s most unforgettable look; a dress made of raw flank 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 an outfit 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 decided to repeat the move in front of millions of viewers. The design, designed by Argentine Franc Fernandez, passed through the hands of a taxidermist and today is preserved in perfect condition in Gaga’s museum in Las Vegas. The influence of the look led to it earning its own Wikipedia page.
Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Will Smith… The shocked faces in the audience at the 2013 VMAs spoke for themselves. The erotic performance by Miley Cyrus to perform her hit We Can’t Stop, accompanied by the already infamous Robin Thicke, shocked spectators as they watched the singer bury her Disney star status forever. “Embarrassing,” “rude,” “strip club-worthy,” and “worrying” are just some of the adjectives the mainstream press dedicated to the performance. Cyrus admitted last year that she had to start going to therapy to deal with all the hate she received. “I carried some guilt and shame around myself for years because of how much controversy and upset I really caused. Now that I’m an adult, I realise how harshly I was judged. I was harshly judged as a child by adults and now, as an adult, I realise that I would never harshly judge a child,” she told the British edition of Vogue magazine.
“He’s an idiot,” said the president of the United States when asked his opinion on the episode that shocked the country on September 13, 2009. The controversial rapper managed to irk 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 from grief after the incident — MTV president Van Toffler found her “desperately crying in the dressing room next to her mother” — the singer recovered to become 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.”
Considered by Rolling Stone magazine as the most scandalous moment in the history of the VMAs — 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 chapter of pop culture: kissing her successors Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, dressed as brides. The producers of the show made sure to maximize the sensationalism with a lingering shot of a sad-faced Justin Timberlake, Britney’s ex-boyfriend, which meant viewers did not see Madonna kiss 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, MTV encouraged it to provide the necessary spice after the previous edition was marked by sober tributes to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. A curiosity: Jennifer Lopez was originally chosen to accompany Madonna and Britney, but the Bronx native backed out of the plan at the last minute because she was filming the movie Shall We Dance?
As if they were a newly formed royal couple, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’ only daughter, publicly presented their newly certified marriage at the start of the 1994 gala. “Nobody thought this would last,” Jackson said before planting a passionate 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, with the couple already immersed in a crisis. A few months later, they divorced amid accusations that their relationship had been a publicity stunt.
Paying homage to Salma Hayek’s entrance in From Dusk Till Dawn, Britney Spears shocked the audience by appearing on stage with an albino python during the performance of her single I’m A Slave 4 U at the 2001 edition. Her intention was to leave behind the innocent image of her early days and appear more sensual and transgressive, and she succeeded. Although she admits that it was one of her favorite career moments, in her memoir The Woman In Me she confesses to 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.”
Before social media monopolized the most intimate celebrity announcements, even an awards gala could be a suitable setting to announce the imminent arrival of a baby. This must have been what Beyoncé thought, as the superstar took advantage of the 2011 VMAs to look at the camera, unbutton her glamorous jacket at the end of her performance of Love on Top, and reveal an incipient belly. “I want you to feel the love that is growing inside me,” she said. Today, her first-born, Blue Ivy, is already accompanying her as a dancer on her world tour.
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. It was 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 Rage’s video clip — directed by Michael Moore and which forced the doors of Wall Street to close due to the riots it caused — showed his annoyance by climbing to the top of a structure that presided over the set to protest the acceptance speech. Commerford ended up being arrested and spent a night in jail. The leader of Rage Against the Machine, Zach de la Rocha, was so angry with his partner’s behavior that he dissolved the band a few weeks later.
The legendary Supremes vocalist was tasked with presenting the award for Best Hip-Hop Video at the 1999 VMAs. She was accompanied on stage by Mary J. Blige and Lil’ Kim, 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 greeted by cheers from the audience.
Back to the Present: What to Expect at the 2024 VMAs
The 2024 VMAs will mark the 40th anniversary of the awards show, and MTV is pulling out all the stops to make this year's event a truly unforgettable one. With a lineup of some of the biggest names in music, the VMAs are sure to be a night of amazing performances and historic moments.
Given the ever-changing broadcast landscape, it’s amazing that the VMAs are turning 40. How will you acknowledge the anniversary on the show?
First, the VMAs turning 40 is a real testament to the MTV brand, and the staying power and relevance of the VMAs.
Specifically, to celebrate the 40th, we're putting together five flashback moments where we're going to look at highlights of the most iconic moments from VMAs past, and then we're going to land on one. So, if you can imagine, we're going to flash through 8 or 10 moments quickly, and then we're going to land on, say, Madonna and the wedding dress from 1984, or Britney Spears with the snake doing “I’m a Slave 4 U” from 2001. We’ll be rolling those out throughout the show.
In addition to that, we've got what we call the extended play stage, and on the extended play stage, we booked two of the hottest emerging artists, Teddy Swims and Jessie Murph, who will each do three separate short performances. For the third performance, they’ll cover a portion of an iconic VMA performance.
The 2024 VMAs: A Look at the Lineup
The 2024 VMAs will feature a star-studded lineup of performers, including:
- Eminem
- Katy Perry
- Megan Thee Stallion
- Chappell Roan
- Sabrina Carpenter
- Benson Boone
- Anitta
- GloRilla
- Camila Cabello
- KAROL G
- Lenny Kravitz
- LL Cool J
- Teddy Swims
- Jessie Murph
This year's VMAs are sure to be a night to remember. Be sure to tune in on September 11 at 8 p.m. ET on MTV to see all the action!
One Final Thought: The Future of Award Shows
The VMAs are just one of many award shows that are still going strong in the age of streaming. But with so many award shows vying for attention, it's important to consider what the future holds for this genre of entertainment.
Gillmer, Paramount's president of Music, Music Talent, Programming & Events and Paramount+'s chief content officer, Music, has been around long enough to know that MTV, in its various iterations, hasn’t always embraced its history. “I lived through that era of, ‘We have to live in the here and now. We don't want to look to the past. It makes us look old and irrelevant.’ This VMAs is definitely not living in the past, but we're not necessarily afraid of the past, either,” he says. “I feel like we've pulled out all the stops, with arguably our best lineup ever.”
The VMAs: A Lasting Legacy
The VMAs are one of the most important events in the music industry. They provide a platform for artists to showcase their talents, to connect with their fans, and to make history. As the VMAs celebrate their 40th anniversary, it's clear that they are still as relevant and exciting as ever.
The VMAs are a testament to the power of music to bring people together, and to the enduring legacy of MTV. The VMAs are sure to continue to be a force in the music industry for many years to come.
