The MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday left many viewers with one question — are we being Punk’D?
I was also curious as to when the show will be officially changed to the MTV Beyoncé Music Awards because that’s honestly what I thought I was watching this year.
That’s not an exaggeration. Beyoncé won all but two of the 10 awards for which she was nominated. On top of that, she did an entire 15-minute stage version of her recent visual album, “Lemonade.”
This is really no surprise considering the success and visual brilliance of the album. However, the irony is Rihanna received the Lifetime Achievement Award, not Beyoncé.
Don’t get me wrong, Rihanna got her time in the spotlight as well. She performed a variety of her recent hits and was well-received by multiple artists at the event.
But considering most of the headlines after the event read something along the lines of “Beyoncé steals the show at VMAs,” we can safely assume no one seemed to care about Rihanna’s award.
Also, any article that had the decency to mention Rihanna primarily focused on Drake’s introductory speech, which totally diminishes the value of the award and what it means to Rihanna.
Needless to say, Beyoncé’s fandom is getting out of hand — to the point that she will pretty much win any award for which she’s nominated just because of her popularity.
This is what happens when awards ceremonies like the VMAs allow viewers to vote for winners. The whole thing becomes a massive popularity contest that uses concert performances as a crutch.
Bey-demic aside, there were some pretty weird moments at the VMAs this year.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way — the reveal of Kanye West’s new music video “Fade.” Teyana Taylor is a talented dancer, and obviously attractive, but what was up with that video?
One moment Taylor is doing some sort of 21st-century “Flashdance” homage, then she’s randomly in the shower with some other dude, and finally at the end, she turns into a cat and is sitting among a large flock of sheep.
Art, I guess?
Speaking of Yeezy, what was up with him? He was so tame.
I mean, yeah, there was that moment when he declared himself to be his own role model, but that’s a basic Kanye conversation starter.
The only reason we know he’s okay is because he gave hilarious shout-outs to Taylor Swift and Amber Rose. There’s the Kanye we love.
But the weirdest moment of them all was when Michael Phelps randomly showed up at the show and declared hip-hop artist Future to be one of the most inspiring rappers ever. I guess now we all know there isn’t a lot of hip-hop in whatever aquatic wonderland Phelps is from.
It’s hard to tell at this point what parts of the VMAs were real and which were just weird Saturday Night Live-esque parodies of it.
Despite all these oddities, this was an incredible show from a concert perspective.
Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj had tons of on-stage chemistry on “Side to Side,” Halsey was graceful as always and “Lemonade” live was stunning, to say the least.
It was also wonderful to see Britney Spears return to the VMA stage after a nine-year absence. It was spiteful of MTV to schedule her right after the “Lemonade” performance, but you really have to appreciate Spears’ effort to lip-sync her way through “Make Me.”
With all that said, the VMAs will perhaps always be seen as the lesser-version of the Grammy’s. Maybe someday MTV and its viewers will realize that democracy only works exclusively with politics, not awards shows.
Austin Faulds
