Speeches surprise at MTV’s VMAs
Turns out it wasn’t Miley we needed to worry about.
Virtually all the chatter heading into Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards had to do with what kind of ruckus Miley Cyrus might raise as the show’s host. Two years ago, remember, it was Cyrus — the Disney Channel star turned twerk-happy enfant terrible — who scandalized a nation with her super-raunchy performance alongside Robin Thicke on the VMAs. Then, in 2014, Cyrus didn’t perform, and viewership dropped 18 percent.
So MTV spared no opportunity hyping Cyrus’ gig as emcee for this year’s event, broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
But apart from her flummoxed response to a showstopping accusation by Nicki Minaj, it wasn’t Cyrus who provided Sunday’s thrills. Indeed, compared to Minaj’s vitriol toward the host and a mercurial speech by Kanye West, the host seemed downright tame as she introduced performers and acted in a series of painfully unfunny sketches.
MTV prides itself on the VMAs’ air of unpredictability, and Sunday its first taste came when Minaj accepted her award for best hip-hop video. Minaj turned her laserlike gaze to Cyrus and asked her if she cared to repeat disparaging comments she’d made about Minaj last week in an interview. Cyrus said her words had been twisted but seemed genuinely rattled.
Was it all an act? Perhaps. (OK, almost definitely.) But the moment provided the charge we’d tuned in for.
The VMAs’ other jolt was also an acceptance speech, this one by West, recipient of the Video Vanguard lifetime achievement award. Recent winners of that prize, including Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé, have given elaborate performances as part of their coronations.
West didn’t sing or rap, but his long, evidently improvised speech — which followed a tribute from Taylor Swift, whom he famously interrupted at the 2009 VMAs — felt like a performance anyway as he held forth on his checkered history with Swift and his conviction that “art ain’t always gonna be polite.”
Then he announced that he planned to run for president in 2020, a declaration that feels just right in the age of Donald Trump.
Wire Services