Winners and key moments : NPR

The fortieth MTV Video Music Awards celebrated a few of at present’s largest names and songs, in addition to the present’s personal storied historical past.

The star-studded affair, broadcast from the UBS Area in New York late Wednesday, featured a number of hours’ price of shows and performances — together with from pop stars Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, rap legend LL Cool J and the night’s host, Megan Thee Stallion.

These had been interspersed with flashbacks of a number of the award present’s most iconic moments, similar to Madonna’s 1984 “Like a Virgin” efficiency, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley kissing onstage in 1994, Taylor Swift’s 2009 rendition of “You Belong With Me” and Miley Cyrus twerking with Robin Thicke in 2013.

Among the performances paid tribute to that historical past: One among Megan Thee Stallion’s outfit adjustments noticed her take the stage draped in a stay snake, a la Britney Spears’ 2001 “I’m a Slave 4 U” efficiency (she appeared wanting to shed it, although).

And Eminem opened the present with a medley of hits accompanied by a mob of Slim Shady-lookalikes, in a scene harking back to his 2000 efficiency. He picked up two trophies, bringing his profession whole to fifteen — essentially the most VMAs of any male artist.

Swift took house seven awards, essentially the most of any artist, to carry her general whole to 30 VMAs — and tied Beyonce’s report.

Right here’s a take a look at a number of the night time’s highlights and largest winners.

Taylor Swift swept, once more

Swift took house the highest award, video of the yr, for “Fortnight” that includes Put up Malone. It’s the third yr in a row she’s gained in that class, after “Anti-Hero” in 2023 and “All Too Effectively (10 Minute Model) (Taylor’s Model)” in 2022.

She additionally gained artist of the yr for the second yr in a row. That makes her the primary artist to win the award twice, the Washington Put up studies.

Swift made headlines in a number of acceptance speeches all through the night time.

She started the primary by honoring the victims of 9/11, calling that “crucial factor about at present.”

In her last speech, she shouted out her boyfriend, Kansas Metropolis Chiefs tight finish Travis Kelce. Whereas their relationship has performed out extraordinarily publicly, it was a uncommon shout-out by Swift that drew sustained applause from the viewers.

“One thing that I’ll all the time keep in mind is that once I would end a take, and I’d say, ‘Minimize,’ and we’d be achieved with that take, I might all the time simply hear somebody like cheering and like [going], ‘Whoo!’ from throughout the studio the place we had been taking pictures it, and that one particular person was my boyfriend, Travis,” she mentioned as the gang roared. “All the things this man touches turns to happiness and enjoyable and magic. So I need to thank him for including that to our shoot, as a result of I’ll all the time do not forget that.”

Swift closed her speech by thanking the followers who voted for her, and urging individuals over 18 to register to vote for “one thing else that’s essential: our presidential election.”

Swift’s Instagram endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris simply the earlier night time drove over 300,000 guests to the voter registration web site Vote.gov, as NPR has reported.

Finest new artist Chappell Roan gave a fiery efficiency

Chappell Roan, the 26-year-old Midwestern pop star whose rise this yr has been nothing in need of meteoric, gained the award for greatest new artist at her VMA debut.

She devoted it to the drag artists who encourage her, in an acceptance speech learn straight from her diary.

“Thanks to the people who find themselves followers, who hearken to me, who hear me once I share my pleasure and my tears,” she mentioned. “And for all of the queer youngsters within the Midwest watching proper now, I see you. I perceive you, as a result of I’m one in all you. And don’t ever let anybody let you know that you could’t be precisely who you need to be.”

At one other level, Roan — clad in a go well with of armor and armed with a lit crossbow — carried out her newest hit, “Good Luck Babe,” as backup dancers dressed as knights battled onstage in entrance of a burning fort.

She was launched by drag queen Sasha Colby, who known as her “my daughter” and “your favourite drag queen’s favourite artist” — a phrase of hers that Roan quoted at her now-famous Coachella efficiency earlier this yr.

Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ is topped

Sabrina Carpenter, whose pop hits helped outline the sounds of summer season, accepted the award for her track “Espresso.”

She thanked her followers, household, pets, group members and “that me espresso,” a line from the track.

Earlier within the night time, Carpenter carried out a risque medley of her summer season singles “Please Please Please,” “Style” and “Espresso,” whereas dancing with an astronaut (aka the MTV “Moonperson”) and a blue alien — whom she kissed passionately at one level.

Gymnast Jordan Chiles will get her bronze …

… from rapper and Olympic hype man Taste Flav, who introduced the award for greatest collaboration.

Chiles, whose bronze medal within the girls’s ground train last was revoked in August following a scoring attraction by Romanian officers, appeared alongside Flav to introduce the award however was as an alternative shocked with one in all her personal.

Taste Flav, whose flip as an official hype man for the Olympic U.S. girls’s water polo group gained all of them admirers over the summer season, introduced Chiles with a bronze clock necklace (his signature accent courting again to his Public Enemy days within the Nineteen Eighties) that he’d revealed on social media earlier this summer season.

“I do know they tried to take your medal away from you, however you realize what? I bought you one thing that they cannot take away from you,” he mentioned, putting it round her neck as the gang roared.

Chiles smiled and shook her head in disbelief, responding, “I don’t even know what to say right here.”

Chiles spoke publicly in regards to the medal incident for the primary time earlier that very same day, on the Forbes Energy Girls’s Summit. She mentioned she felt that “every part that has gone on, it’s not in regards to the medal, it’s about my pores and skin colour,” including that it made her really feel unvoiced and disillusioned.

“The most important factor that was taken from me was that it was the popularity of who I used to be,” she mentioned. “Not simply my sport, however the particular person I’m.”

Katy Perry accepts the Video Vanguard Award with a visit by means of her discography

Katy Perry carried out a virtually 10-minute mashup of her best hits — together with “E.T.”, “Darkish Horse,” “Teenage Dream,” “California Gurls,” “I Kissed A Lady” and “Firework,” whereas alternately suspended midair, dancing atop a piano and sporting big butterfly wings.

She additionally accepted the Video Vanguard Award, which acknowledges lifetime achievement.

“I did that each one on the primary day of my interval, are you able to consider it?” Perry joked after accepting the glory from her associate, Orlando Bloom, because the AP studies. “There are such a lot of issues that must align to have an extended and profitable profession as an artist. There are not any decade-long accidents.”

LL Cool J celebrates 40 years of Def Jam Recordings

Towards the top of the ceremony, rap pioneer LL Cool J — who launched his first album in over a decade final week — took to the stage to honor 40 years of the hip-hop label Def Jam Recordings.

He was joined by Taste Flav and Chuck D of Public Enemy, one of many label’s most iconic artists, for a medley of hits together with “Going Again to Cali” and “Carry The Noise” that bought the gang to its ft.

LL Cool J, the primary rap artist to win the Video Vanguard Award, in 1997, has a lengthy historical past with the VMAs.

He advised NPR’s Morning Version final week that he doesn’t see his long-awaited new album, The FORCE, as a comeback:

“How are you going to name it a comeback once I’ve been right here for years, man?”

Right here’s the total checklist of winners:

• Video of the yr: Taylor Swift
• Artist of the yr: Taylor Swift
• Tune of the yr: Sabrina Carpenter — “Espresso” 
• Finest new artist: Chappell Roan
• MTV PUSH efficiency of the yr: Le Sserafim — “Straightforward” 
• Finest collaboration: Taylor Swift ft. Put up Malone — “Fortnight” 
• Finest pop: Taylor Swift
• Finest hip-hop: Eminem — “Houdini” 
• Finest R&B: SZA — “Snooze” 
• Finest various: Benson Boone — “Stunning Issues” 
• Finest rock: Lenny Kravitz — “Human”
• Finest Latin: Anitta — “Mil Veces” 
• Finest Okay-pop: Lisa — “Rockstar” 
• Finest Afrobeats: Tyla — “Water” 
• Video for good: Billie Eilish — “What Was I Made For (From The Movement Image “Barbie”)
• Finest path: Taylor Swift ft. Put up Malone – “Fortnight” 
• Finest cinematography: Ariana Grande — “we are able to’t be mates (wait to your love)”
• Finest visible results: Eminem — “Houdini” 
• Finest choreography: Dua Lipa — “Houdini” 
• Finest artwork path: Megan Thee Stallion — “BOA”
• Finest modifying: Taylor Swift ft. Put up Malone – “Fortnight” 
• Finest trending video: Megan Thee Stallion ft. Yuki Chiba – “Mamushi”
• Finest group: Seventeen
• Tune of summer season: Taylor Swift ft. Put up Malone – “Fortnight” 
• VMAs most iconic efficiency: Katy Perry — “Roar”