VMA 2017: performances, winners, and highlights

Every weekend, we pick a movie you can stream that dovetails with current events. Old, new, blockbuster, arthouse: They’re all fair game. What you can count on is a weekend watch that sheds new light on the week that was. The movies of the week for August 27 through September 2 are Gone Girl (2014), which is available to digitally rent on Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, iTunes, and Google Play; and Vertigo (1958), which is also available to digitally rent on Amazon, YouTube, Vudu, iTunes, and Google Play.

Taylor Swift began this week by wiping her social media slate clean — deleting old posts and even profile pictures — and ended it by releasing the lyric video for her new track, “Look What You Made Me Do,” with the full music video to premiere at the VMAs on Sunday night. (It’s no accident that Katy Perry is hosting.)

The winners of MTV’s Video Music Awards have rarely been as exciting as what unfolds at the ceremony itself. Since their 1984 debut, the awards have become known for their spectacle, building a reputation as the home of some of modern music’s most memorable performances, shocking moments, and splashiest feuds.

The most-nominated artists going into the 2017 VMAs were Kendrick Lamar (eight), followed by the Weeknd and VMA host Katy Perry (five each). But here, let’s test exactly how much attention is paid to the awards themselves in the years after they’re given out: Did you remember that 2001’s Video of the Year trophy went to “Lady Marmalade”? No? How about Britney Spears’s 2001 performance of “I’m a Slave 4 U” featuring a giant albino python?

The Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV, a descendant of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, took the podium near the end of the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night to deliver a heartfelt statement against the violence that recently occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the name of his ancestor.

”We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate,” said Lee, a pastor at North Carolina’s Bethany United Church of Christ. Later in the speech, he introduced Susan Bro, mother of the late Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville when a supporter of the “Unite the Right” rally drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters:

One of the themes of the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards was to resist social injustice in general and the Trump administration in particular, but when Pink accepted the VMAs’ Video Vanguard Award, she kept her resistance small and personal.

Pink’s daughter, the singer said, had recently told her that she was the ugliest person she knew. “I look like a boy with long hair,” she said to her mother.

Jared Leto paid a special tribute to two of rock’s fallen idols at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards.

In a moving speech, Leto remembered the late Chris Cornell, former lead singer of Soundgarden, and the late Chester Bennington, former lead singer of Linkin Park. Both men were close friends and each died by suicide earlier this year — Bennington on what would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday.

In one of the stranger moments at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, Lorde graced us with a performance that consisted of her making faces and bopping around like a dizzy 2-year-old.

Granted, Lorde is already one of the music industry’s more unique performers, with a spastic style of dance that frequently looks like the marriage between a dark magician and a seizure, but the logic behind this silent, expressive performance was almost certainly not 100 percent artistic.

Taylor Swift wasn’t nominated for any VMAs this year, but that didn’t stop her from having the most anticipated moment of the ceremony. The video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” her new robotic snarl of a kiss-off anthem to anyone who’s dared to give her shit over the years, premiered half an hour into the show.

And it was, as anticipated, a lot.

The 2017 MTV Video Music Awards will take place this Sunday, August 27, and they’re sure to bring the usual mix of flashy pop stars, celebrity drama, and innovative performances that have made the annual show a late-summer staple. Hosted by Katy Perry from the Forum in Los Angeles, the awards will air live on both coasts and feature a stacked list of performances from the likes of Perry, Kendrick Lamar, Lorde, Miley Cyrus, Pink, and many others. Plus, if the rumors are true, Taylor Swift may make a surprise appearance. Here’s everything you need to know.

When: Sunday, August 27, at 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific (with the pre-show kicking off at 7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific). MTV will air the awards live on both coasts.

The infamous feud between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift is one of those celebrity feuds that is so dumb and so petty that it is frankly astonishing to think it takes up as much real estate as it does in the pop culture universe. But it’s been a major part of the publicity narratives surrounding both Perry and Swift for years — and with Perry hosting the MTV Video Music Awards this Sunday, on the heels of a newly released single and album announcement from Swift, the story of the feud is almost certainly about to come to some sort of climax.

Maybe there will be a tearful reconciliation duet. Maybe one of them will call out the other one from the stage, à la Nicki Minaj’s immortal “Miley, what’s good?” at the 2015 awards. Maybe they’ll decide to settle things once and for all with a dance-off! (Look, a girl can dream.) (Honestly, neither of them is a very good dancer; it would be a draw.)