VMA 2016: performances, winners, and highlights

When Beyoncé finished her performance at the 2016 VMAs, there was no question as to who the biggest pop star on the planet is. Not that there was ever any doubt.

Bey’s performance was powerful — an artistic musing on violence that, like her album, also showcase her showmanship and untouchable talent as an artist.

Beyoncé refuses to shy away from taking a moment to address police brutality — the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards included.

Alongside her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, model Winnie Harlow, and musical protégés Chloe & Halle and Ingrid, Beyoncé’s white carpet entourage also included mothers of victims of police brutality and vigilante violence: Gwen Carr, Lesley McSpadden, Sybrina Fulton, and Wanda Johnson whose sons Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Oscar Grant catalyzed the contemporary movement for black lives.

Few awards shows live up to their hype, but the MTV Video Music Awards have almost always been an exception to that rule. Ever since the first show in 1984, the VMAs have been good for some jaw-dropping performances, prime celebrity watching in the audience, and, if they’re lucky, the kinds of moments that keep people dissecting their layers for years to come.

The 2016 awards were a decidedly mixed bag, though. Taking place in New York City’s Madison Square Garden for the first time — for decades, the VMAs have switched between slightly smaller venues in New York and LA — the production moved in fits and starts, with obvious sound and organizational issues cramping most of the performances.

Throughout Rihanna’s career, there’s been an undercurrent of criticism: that she isn’t that good of a singer. On Sunday night, at the 2016 MTV VMAs, she silenced those doubters.

In her last performance of the night, Rihanna performed a medley that included “Stay” and “Diamonds” — a series of songs that showcased her vocals, as opposed to the party anthems and dance tunes that made her famous. The arrangement was pared down, by Rihanna standards, at least — there wasn’t any flash, just Rihanna belting out those ballads accompanied by an orchestra.

Whenever Britney Spears is at the VMAs, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. It only matters that it’s Britney Spears.

She’s performed on the VMAs stage five times since 1999, starting with “Baby One More Time” alongside N’SYNC, through her own iconic “I’m a Slave 4 U” performance alongside a tiger and banana python, and finally her underwhelming performance in 2007 of “Gimme More.” The 2007 performance was supposed to be a comeback after years of incredibly public tumult, but instead, it just felt like confirmation that Britney was never quite going to be Britney again.

Kanye West is usually good for the kind of splashy, controversial moments that make award shows uniquely great — or at least the kind that get people talking.

Most infamous is the moment at the 2009 VMAs when he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video (“You Belong With Me”) to insist that Beyoncé should have won the award for “Single Ladies.” That incident sparked years of debate, breathless headlines, and heated rivalries, extending even as recently as July of this year, when Kim Kardashian posted a particularly pointed Snapchat story to expose Swift as a fraud. (And, yes, it’s all exactly as exhausting as it sounds.)

Ariana Grande, otherwise known as Mariah Carey’s doughnut-licking, bunny ear–wearing Babadook, is at the point of her career where she wants us to remind us that she is a sexual woman. This was evident at the 2016 VMAs, when the singer performed “Side to Side” — a song about female empowerment — on a set of stationary bikes.

On these magical bikes, the singer and her dancers performed various interpretative cardio-inspired dance moves while wearing skimpy costumes. It’s basically a naughty riff on the exercise phenomenon known as SoulCycle.

More than 30 years after they first debuted, the MTV Video Music Awards have become less about winners and losers than about the hijinks that happen on air during the ceremony broadcast. (The general exception is the ultimate award for Video of the Year, which has consistently rankled fans and artists alike.) Performers go all out for the VMAs, drawing on everything from zoo animals to twerking to get people talking about them, regardless of whether they win an award.

There have been hundreds of VMA performances since the awards kicked off in 1984, but here are the 13 everyone remembers — or should, anyway.