By Charlotte Hope @charlottehope
VMAs Special
The MTV Video Music Awards happened this weekend. Did you know? Of course you did. The annual ceremony is the focal point for many pop stars the world over. It is, after all, the forum in which Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake decided to wear matching patchwork denim outfits (2001) and in with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter announced her pregnancy (2011). These two events alone give the VMAs a huge amount of significance, so I thought for this week’s Column I’d give you a handy guide to what went down this year.
Beyoncé was given an award by Blue Ivy Carter
Beyoncé received a ‘Moon Man’ (the statuette presented by way of a trophy) in celebration of her winning the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award. Presumably this was in honour of her non-stop touring and visual album that was released at the back end of 2013. Not one to ever shy away from reinforcing their brand, after a near 20 minute performance B was presented with the award by her husband, Jay-Z, who had their daughter Blue Ivy perched on his hip. Beyoncé accepted the award after kissing her daughter and her husband and crying real tears.
This, we can assume, was supposed to be a giant middle finger to the rumours that have been buzzing around since the Solange/Jay-Z lift fiasco about the fragility of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s marriage. It worked, I suppose. Blue looked really comfortable at the sight of her parents kissing which either means that they’ve given their toddler extensive media training or that all is well in their multi million pound empire. How nice.
Nicki Minaj’s dress split open
Oh no! It’s Superbowl 2004 all over again, except without any nipple. Actually even that was weird metallic nipple cover, wasn’t it? Anyway, Nicki Minaj’s lovely tight black velvet dress split open down the middle leaving her to basically hold it together for the performance of her song ‘Bang Bang’ with Ariana Grande and Jessie J. What a nightmare that must have been! It must have been so difficult to hold a microphone and her dress togeth… oh. Oh wait – she’s actually got a headset microphone! How lucky! Those on stage with her must also have headset… oh. No, they’re holding microphones. Her contemporaries on stage with her singing the same song have hand held microphones whilst she has a headset and her dress split open!
Surely that’s just all one enormous coincidence and not a racy attempt to get ratings up? Which, surely, they didn’t need given that the video for Minaj’s new song ‘Anaconda’ broke a world record on Vevo for fastest views. It probably was just an accident, eh?
Miley Cyrus brought a homeless man as her date
Miley Cyrus did what is ostensibly a very honourable thing and brought a homeless man called Jesse as her date. When her name was called as the winner of Video of the Year, Jesse got up on stage and accepted the award for her. In a speech that was probably approved by the powers that be before he got on stage, Jesse sought to raise awareness for the millions of homeless youths on the streets of America.
Whilst this is noble and quite an important issue that probably should be addressed, it is my contention that it was slightly, ever so slightly, undermined by Cyrus sitting on the side of the stage in a PVC top and trousers sobbing almost uncontrollably as Jesse made his speech. Lest we forget, readers, that last year Cyrus courted controversy by twerking on tragic 30 something Robin Thicke. This year I’m pleased to see she’s taken up a more humanitarian approach, even if it did seem like she picked the most attractive homeless man possible to promote the cause.