Whether it is Lady Gaga’s avant-garde meat dress or the origin of Taylor Swift and Kanye West’s infamous feud, MTV’s Video and Music Awards (VMAs) are a stage for the unexpected. The history of the award show confirms its place in the pop culture sector. While celebrity appearances have ranged from Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake to Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, the same public anticipation exists — what will my favorite artist’s performance consist of, what awards will they win, and above all, what will they be wearing? While the VMAs affirm artists’ creative hard work and success, they are, like many broadcasted and commercialized events, more for the audience than the performers. Luckily for the audience, the VMAs, contrary to the pretentious nature of The Oscars or Tonys, embrace the eccentricity of celebrities.
While this year’s show may not have featured Michael Jackson’s 44th birthday or Drake’s love confession to Rihanna, the 2024 VMAs did not lack excitement. Highlights include Chappell Roan’s medieval-inspired staging being set aflame, Sabrina Carpenter’s homage to Madonna in vintage Bob Mackie, and Jordan Chiles being awarded an honorary bronze medal following the 2024 Paris Olympics controversy. Naturally, Taylor Swift accumulated multiple major awards including Video of the Year and Artist of the Year; with a total of 30 wins, Swift now ties with Beyoncé for most victories in VMA history. However, given the unprecedented success of The Eras Tour and the release of “The Tortured Poets Department,” Swift’s victories have lost their novelty. Likely due to overexposure, many have begun to criticize Swift’s dominance over the female pop industry, arguing that her celebrity status now eclipses her artistic merit. The 2024 Grammys catapulted such discourse, and this summer’s pop chart war between Billie Ellish and Charli xcx cemented it. But despite Swift’s critics, she has continued to succeed both commercially and creatively.
This is not the norm. Stereotypically, mainstream media rarely portrays thriving female pop artists over 30. Career longevity is seldom an indication of talent, but instead a product of circumstance. Katy Perry, this year’s Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award recipient, reaffirms this female pop star dilemma: everyone is replaceable. The Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, or the Lifetime Achievement Award, is presented to artists who have imprinted their artistic voice on the music industry and thus, fixed their legacy as a singer, songwriter, and performer. In reviewing the award description, however, one must evaluate the semantics of a singular, critical word: legacy. Someone’s legacy refers to their impact — something that is left behind rather than still forming. While names like Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Olivia Rodrigo are omnipresent in current pop music dialogue, their legacies are yet to be determined. Instead, conversations circulate around the now — a latest music video, outfit, or interview — and in some cases, the future — a new album cycle, collaboration, or upcoming tour performance. These artists are not referred to in the past tense because the art they produce is a living, breathing component of pop culture. Why is this?
Billie Eilish’s breathy vocals drastically vary from Chappell Roan’s passionate belting, so what is the connection between maintained public interest? They are new. Of course, ‘new’ is relative, with Eilish, Rodrigo, and Carpenters’ career breakouts occurring in 2019, 2021, and 2024 respectively. Still, each of these artists is, uncoincidentally, under 30 years old. Aided by increased access to cosmetic products and procedures, modern society associates youth with beauty. Likewise, social media encourages, via its unlimited access to content, overconsumption. When perfectionistic ideals are combined with limitless media, we normalize disposability, and considering that music is a microcosm of pop culture at large, societal conditioning leads us to view artists as disposable — especially women. Therefore, despite Katy Perry’s irrevocable contributions to the ‘bubble-gum pop’ 2010’s sub-genre with “Teenage Dream,” she is now deemed outdated. Perry’s 2024 album release, “143,” generated minimal buzz with most of the public ignoring, if not heavily criticizing, her work. A mom nearing 40, Perry is undoubtedly not the same woman who rested nude on a bed of pink clouds in her inaugural album, and this should be okay. Artists, for both their creative output and mental health, should be allowed to evolve rather than conform to maintain mainstream attention. If we can celebrate and award artists for their past contributions to the music industry, then we can also offer grace as such artists navigate new chapters in their work. After, of course, we watch Sabrina Carpenter steal a kiss with a blue alien.
