Over the years, the MTV Video Music Awards have been full of major pop culture moments since it first started in 1984! From onstage feuds to jaw-dropping performances and even raw meat dresses, the VMAs have become the night that celebs step out in their craziest outfits and make some headlines.
Perhaps one of the most memorable moments occurred in 2009 when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift‘s Best Female Video speech, which kicked off their long ongoing feud. While the singer took the stage to accept her award for “You Belong With Me,” the “Stronger” rapper jumped out of his seat and took the mic. Kanye went on to claim that Beyoncé actually should have won the awards for her song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” and subsequent music video.
“Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all times!” he said. “One of the best videos of all time!”
Years later, the “Look What You Made Me Do” songstress reflected on how the infamous moment, ultimately, changed her life.
“At the time, I didn’t know they were booing him doing that. I thought they were booing me,” Taylor recalled in her January 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana. “For someone who’s built their whole belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing is a pretty formative experience. That was sort of a catalyst for a lot of psychological paths that I went down. And not all of them were beneficial. It was all fueled by not feeling like I belonged there.”
Another feud, albeit a minor one, that took place on the VMAs stage was between Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus in 2015. When the nominations came out earlier that year, the “Only” rapper appeared to throw shade at the entire ceremony in a Twitter post. The Hannah Montana alum — who hosted the show in 2015 — claimed in an article for The New York Times that Nicki was being “not very polite” by starting a “pop star against pop star war.”
So, after Nicki won her award for Best Hip Hop Video, she called Miley out. “And now back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me in the press … Miley, what’s good?” she said.
“I saw [Miley] just looking at me, with her face screwed up, and I thought, What the!” Nicki later explained in an October 2015 interview with The New York Times Magazine, noting that her initial tweet was about her “speaking on something that affects Black women.”
Scroll through our gallery to see more unforgettable moments from the MTV VMAs over the years.
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