Taylor Swift took home the night’s biggest prize – and announced a new album – during the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, a chaotic, bleep-heavy show that nodded to music phenomena past and present, and featured a surprise appearance by Johnny Depp.
Swift, who won best longform video and video of the year for All Too Well (10 Minute Version) for her 2021 re-recorded album Red, was the only artist to double-up on televised awards. Across three hours, MTV moonmen statues went to industry veterans such as Nicki Minaj (best hip-hop) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (best rock); non-English superstars such as Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny (artist of the year) and Blackpink’s Lisa (best K-pop); and newer faces Jack Harlow (song of summer), Lil Nas X (best collaboration, with Harlow, for Industry Baby) and Dove Cameron, a former Disney child star turned actor, who surprised some to win best new artist.
Swift noted that the final category of the evening, video of the year, was historic, as “for the first time in VMA history, four of the directors nominated in the video of the year category are women.” The pop star said her fans had “emboldened” her to re-record her first five albums, as part of a dispute with her former record label, and used the speech to announce a “brand new album” that will be released 21 October.
Swift is the only artist to win a third video of the year trophy, and the first to win for a video she directed herself. She won previously in 2015 for Bad Blood and 2019 for You Need to Calm Down.
The spectre of virality hung over the ceremony in Newark, New Jersey which, after two relatively buttoned-up (and Covid-straitened) years, swerved into raunchy, unpredictable, self-consciously forward-thinking territory. Snoop Dogg and Eminem performed their new song From the D 2 the LBC mostly in the metaverse, alongside Bored Ape NFTs. Ads for sponsor Doritos appeared on stage far more than LL Cool J, one of three “emcees” along with rappers Jack Harlow and Nicki Minaj. Several performances, including Minaj’s and J Balvin’s, included holographic elements.
In a controversial move seemingly targeted at generating internet chatter, Johnny Depp made several surprise cameos, his head digitally superimposed on the helmet of MTV’s floating astronaut mascot. His appearance came nearly three months after his victory in a highly public defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard that generated coverage some criticised as encouraging “an orgy of misogyny”.
The 59-year-old actor, who joked to the crowd outside the Prudential Center that he “needed the work”, appeared later in the telecast to say he’s “available for birthdays, barmitzvahs, batmitzvahs, weddings, wakes, any old thing you need”.
The bleep-heavy telecast offered plenty of risque moments. Lizzo, accepting the video for good award for her song About Damn Time, shouted down “all the bitches who got something to say about me in the press” with “bitch I’m winning, hoe!” The camera panned out to generic stadium shots for seconds at a time during Måneskin’s performance as lead singer Damiano Damon gyrated in assless chaps. And the Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist Flea’s thank you to drummer Chad Smith was almost entirely censored.
There were several nods to musical legacy; Harlow opened the show with his song First Class, an interpolation of Fergie’s 2006 hit Glamorous alongside the former Black Eyed Peas member herself. There were not one but two lifetime achievement awards, given to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Minaj.
The band performed their new single Black Summer and their 2002 hit Can’t Stop before accepting the Global Icon award, celebrating their almost 40-year career. Lead singer Anthony Kiedis thanked “the sassy mistress known as MTV for supporting us for 1,000 years or more” while Flea, in an effusive and curse-laden addition, said he loved “cockroaches and dirt and trees, and every human being … deer and deer antlers, and birds and sky”.
In a fittingly hot pink-themed medley, Minaj dipped into over a decade of hits, followed by a scattered acceptance speech in which the 39-year-old Trinidadian-American rapper, clearly nervous, at one point walked away from the podium to retrieve her phone from an assistant.
“I wish that Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson were here,” Minaj said in her speech. “I wish that people had understood what they meant and what they were going through. I wish people took mental health seriously, even for the people that you think have the perfect lives.”
She brought the show home with “stay super freaky, have great vagina, I love you” – a fitting end to a strange, profane evening.
