The VMAs Are in a Pretty Good Place With This Pop Star Class — So What’s With All the Legacy Medleys? (Critic’s Take)

The eternal dissonance of the MTV Video Music Awards ostensibly celebrating a signifier nary longer actively promoted connected the brand’s flagship transmission has agelong made the amusement a tricky tightrope to beryllium walked. It’s led to a batch of disorder successful class nomenclature, of people — with the nouns disappearing from categories similar “best pop” and “best hip-hop,” and artists present accepting awards similar “song of the summer” and “best album” that are wholly divorced from the euphony video format. But a overmuch bigger interest for the VMAs than what awards they should beryllium giving retired successful 2025 is who they’re putting the amusement connected for the archetypal place: the kids who person been the lifeblood of the channel’s assemblage for implicit 40 years now, oregon the millennials who really retrieve erstwhile euphony videos connected MTV inactive moved the culture.

It’s a question whose reply the VMAs annually attempts to divided the quality between, usually with immoderate equilibrium of seasoned and caller performers, mostly weighted towards the latter. A fewer times successful caller years, birthdays had adjacent been fixed thing of a built-in excuse to spell retro, via the 40th day of some the transmission (2021) and the VMAs themselves (2024), and the wide celebrated 50th day of hip-hop successful 2023. (LL Cool J adjacent closed the ’24 VMAs with a medley to observe the iconic Def Jam statement turning 40.) Those anniversary-themed tributes and performances occasionally took a small excessively dense a touch, but they felt timely capable and were mostly spaced retired good capable that they didn’t consciousness similar they overwhelmed the newer artists — the artists who would, ostensibly, support the amusement applicable capable to support it from ever turning wholly into a Those Were the Days fest.

And that’s what made the 2025 VMAs truthful frustrating. Those modern artists were determination connected Sunday nighttime (Sept. 7), and fundamentally successful afloat effect — superstars who’d already made their stock of VMA history, and rising hitmakers who already look poised to perchance bash truthful successful the future. And yet it could beryllium casual to suffer way of them with each the signifier and surface clip fixed to bequest artists, often without a peculiar urgency (and surely nary over-arching day peg) to their performances, and stacked wrong the archetypal 2 hours of the broadcast. It felt similar a missed accidental to truly showcase the contiguous and future, and yet fto the past instrumentality a spot of a backseat.

Because the accidental was there. What felt similar a higher attraction of A-list names than successful galore caller years showed up to the awards; anytime you’ve got Doja Cat doing robot creation breaks with keytarists connected signifier portion Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande boogie unneurotic successful the assemblage to commencement the show, you’re getting disconnected connected the close foot. Taylor Swift was missing this year, and her world-swallowing beingness was surely conspicuous successful its absence, but that besides meant that stars similar Doja, Gaga and Grande could measurement up to transportation a small much of the seasoned load for the evening — at slightest until Gaga had to publication it for her ain performance that nighttime astatine Madison Square Garden, though she inactive waved to the VMAs from Manhattan via her jaw-dropping distant show of “Abracadabra” and “The Dead Dance.” (The evident emotion Gaga and Grande displayed successful their respective...