MTV VMA 2015: all of the big moments, performances, and surprises

Kanye West’s Vanguard Award acceptance speech at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards wasn’t the greatest acceptance speech ever. Like the man delivering it, it had a tendency to ramble, and it leapt all over the place, across six or seven different themes.

But as with everything West does, there was a naked emotionality to the speech, a throbbing heart that the sloppiness seemed almost to exist to hide. The speech was filled with brilliant, off-the-cuff asides and turns of phrase. (My favorite: “If I had a daughter at that time, would I have went on stage and grabbed the mic from someone else’s?,” a neat bit of mirroring that turns the question back on both the asker and anyone who’s ever accused him.) And underneath everything, there was a kind of internal structure that made sense once you learned how to tap into it.

While artists may care a great deal about who wins the moonman trophies at MTV’s Video Music Awards, the main incentive for viewers to tune in is that the award show has a history of producing some of pop music’s most iconic (and bizarre) moments. It also doesn’t hurt that live broadcasts always have huge potential for going off the rails, a fact that made hiring Miley Cyrus as the host a strategic — and risky — choice.

While the 2015 VMAs had moments to write home (and/or tweet) about, for the most part, the show was disappointingly routine. Taylor Swift’s wins proved the might of her social media following. She and Nicki Minaj addressed the rumors of bad blood between them. Kanye West made a confusing — but also illuminating, probably? — speech. Host Miley Cyrus, dressed like a series of rebellious My Little Ponies, reminded everyone how much she loves marijuana.

VMA host Miley Cyrus stepped it up for the final performance of night, keeping the MTV censors busy with a raucous show of club kid psychedelia. She brought in contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race as backup dancers, doing a service to anyone who has lived their lives without seeing a drag queen leap and collapse into a split (a.k.a. a “death drop”).

At the end, Cyrus announced that the performance was actually a preview of what’s to come on her new album — and that we can all listen to and download it right now. Also, it’s free!

Taylor Swift won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year for her blockbuster “Bad Blood,“ easily the biggest, most hyped music video of the year.

Since the award is decided by popular vote, it was really Swift’s to lose. But even then, it capped a night in which Swift won additional awards for Female Video and Pop Video, along with introducing Kanye West as he accepted his Vanguard Award (sort of the VMA equivalent of a lifetime achievement prize, except usually given to artists in the prime of their careers).

The 2015 MTV Video Music Awards are being held Sunday, August 30, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Awards will be handed out in 16 categories, and Kanye West will be presented with the Vanguard Award.

Taylor Swift leads the nominations for the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, boasting 10, mostly for her “Bad Blood” video, which is nominated for Video of the Year. Ed Sheeran boasts the second most nominations with six. He is also nominated for Video of the Year for “Thinking Out Loud.“ Kendrick Lamar also boasts four nominations.

The draw of the MTV’s VMAs isn’t (and probably hasn’t ever been) the music videos. This year, it’s been the fights. Prior to the show, we witnessed a Taylor Swift/Nicki Minaj feud that melted the internet. That was followed by a Drake and Meek Mill beef that just made everyone laugh and feel old. While those two were resolved (one much much less embarrassing for Meek Mill than the other), there was still one unresolved leading up to the VMAs: Miley Cyrus versus Nicki Minaj.

Cyrus, the host this year, had accused Minaj of making her snub all about Minaj. “If you want to make it about race, there’s a way you could do that. But don’t make it just about yourself,” Cyrus told the New York Times on August 27.

On a night that featured Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift sharing the stage, pop boy-king Justin Bieber shedding tears after a performance and Miley Cyrus starting fights with everyone, what blew everyone away wasn’t a performance or a surprise. It was an acceptance speech by Kanye West.

West was honored with the Video Vanguard award by Taylor Swift, who explained the genius of Kanye West and referenced the now-infamous moment when West interrupted her.

“[Britney] I’m back,” tweeted pop star/enfant terrible Justin Bieber. If his 2015 VMA performance was anything to go by, he means it.

While “Where Are U Now,” Bieber’s single with Skrillex and Diplo, has been climbing the charts all summer, Bieber himself has kept an unusually low profile. Thus, his VMA performance was his chance to remind everyone why they liked him in the first place, after more recently alienating fans with his more aggressive antics.

Leading up to the 2015 MTV VMAs, the biggest story was a spat between Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift. It started off as a Twitter misunderstanding and ended up tearing this great nation apart. It was a boon for the VMAs, which thrive much more on the spectacle of the unexpected.

Was there going to be blood spilled at the VMAs? Was there going to be another Kanye moment? Would there be a surprise performance?

Minutes before she joined Nicki Minaj to open the 2015 MTV VMAs, Taylor Swift dropped her new video for 1989’s “Wildest Dreams” online.

The video, another collaboration with “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood” director Joseph Kahn, shows a brunette Swift floating around the savana and acting in an Out of Africa lookalike film. Her leading man this time is The Longest Ride actor Scott Eastwood (son of Clint).

Tonight at 9 pm Eastern, MTV will host the 2015 Video Music Awards. The VMAs, might not have the prestige of the Oscars or the record industry clout of the Grammys — in fact, the awards don’t really matter all that much at all — but they do have an advantage in pure spectacle.

Miley Cyrus hosts this year and will be accompanied by performances from Demi Lovato, The Weekend, and Pharrell. Taylor Swift will also be premiering her video for “Wildest Dreams” during the pre-show. Aside from the performances, people will be looking to see if Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj have worked out their differences as well as the perpetual threat of Kanye West hijacking the event.