By Gerrick D. Kennedy / Los Angeles Times
THE 2015 Video Music Awards (VMAs) will, rightfully, be best remembered as a fiery train wreck where causalities, chest-clutching awkwardness and “oh no they didn’t” absurdity were in abundance.
Somewhere between a provoked Nicki Minaj cursing out Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber rising from the stage as if he were Christ, and Kanye West delivering a stream of consciousness that did everything from exposing award-show ratings ploys to announcing a run for president (jokingly, we think), it was clear that none of the pop stars who showed up bothered to care or censor themselves.
The entire telecast was one disastrous mess after another. Here’s five standouts that are going to be hard to scrub from our brains:
Nicki Minaj checking Miley. Oh, so you thought Minaj wouldn’t clap back at Cyrus’s recent New York Times interview? Wrong—so very wrong. Accepting the Moonman for best hip-hop video, the provocative pop-rapper thanked everyone from her fans to her own pastor (because, YOLO) before turning her focus to Cyrus.
““Now, back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me in the press the other day…. Miley, what’s good?” Minaj quipped, in response to Cyrus’s take on the media-fueled brouhaha between the rapper and Taylor Swift. Was it staged? Maybe, probably, but who cares? The look on Cyrus’s face when Minaj put down the award to lay in to her was a reminder that sometimes keeping it real can go awry. And no one thought to put a camera backstage?
Whoever was in charge of the censor button. If anyone earned a raise on Sunday night, it was the guy or gal backstage who had to operate the censor button. Never in award show history was there as much profanity. Cyrus dropped F-bombs like her job depended on it—and showed her breasts multiple times (because, YOLO). Rebel Wilson literally wore an expletive on her chest. Performers didn’t care to censor themselves and neither did award recipients.
And the Parents Television Council, speaking for all the terrible parents out there who still allow their little ones to watch the VMAs, issued this venom after Sunday’s show: “MTV had an opportunity to use its powerful VMA platform to stir a young audience to aspire to something positive and uplifting. Instead, they chose to perpetuate blatant sexualisation—much of it self-inflicted by the artists—and to celebrate the use of illegal drugs. MTV rated the content of the program as appropriate for a child as young as 14, though most parents of teens that age would find such a content rating preposterous.”
So maybe the censor guy or gal won’t be getting a raise after all.
Miley, Miley, Miley. The pop instigator who famously wedged herself into VMA infamy with her tawdry 2013 performance (the one we never forgave Robin Thicke for) truly lived up to hope that her gig as host would be an absolute mess.
She cursed like a drunken sailor, littered her speeches with as many references to her affinity for marijuana as possible, deliberately showed her bare breasts (twice) and performed alongside a bevy of drag queens. She was at her best while dancing alongside some of the most famous contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race, and she was at her worst doing pretty much everything else.
She does get bonus points for using the night as a launching pad for her new album, which she dropped for free immediately after.
Kanye West’s acceptance speech. When Justin Timberlake received the Video Vanguard Award in 2013, he brought the VMAs to a standstill with a muscular 15-minute retrospective of hits and recruited ’NSync for a minireunion.
And last year Beyoncé, given a similar lengthy slot, moved through a spectacular presentation that ran the entirety of her groundbreaking self-titled visual album.
This year’s winner, West, did none of that. After being feted by Swift, because the night was about hatchet burying or whatever, West took the stage. He didn’t perform any of his hits or offer a preview for his eagerly anticipated album. Instead he talked, and talked, and talked. In a speech that was part-motivational, part-rant, part-truth bomb but wholly West, the performer went off the rails in so many directions that we won’t bother trying to decipher.
The fact that PTV put on a VMAs without Beyoncé, Rihanna or Lady Gaga. Don’t ever do that again, please. Why? See all of the above.