The MTV Video Music Awards, commonly abbreviated as VMAs, is an award show presented by MTV to honor the best in the music video medium. The ceremony has often been called the Super Bowl for youth, an acknowledgment of the VMA ceremony's ability to draw millions of youth from teens to 20-somethings each year. By 2001, the VMA had become a coveted award.
The annual VMA ceremony occurs before the end of summer and held either in late August or mid-September, and broadcast live on CBS. The first VMA ceremony was held in 1984 at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. The ceremonies are normally held in either New York City or Los Angeles. However, the ceremonies have also been hosted in Miami, Las Vegas, Newark, New Jersey, and more recently, in Elmont, New York, on Long Island.
The statue given to winners is an astronaut on the Moon, one of the earliest representations of MTV, and was colloquially called a "moonman", though it has been called a "moon person" by MTV since the 2017 ceremony. The statue was conceived by Manhattan Design, who were also designers of the original MTV logo, based on the network's debut network identification animation utilizing Apollo 11 mission footage, created by Fred Seibert and produced by Alan Goodman and Buzz Potamkin at Buzzco Associates. The statue is now made by Society Awards, a New York City-based firm. Since the 2006 ceremony, viewers are able to vote for their favorite videos in all general categories.
Taylor Swift is the most awarded solo artist in the history of the VMAs, having won 30 trophies between 2009 and 2024, which includes record-breaking five Video of the Year VMAs ("Bad Blood", "You Need To Calm Down", All Too Well: The Short Film, "Anti-Hero" and "Fortnight"). On September 21, 2026, Taylor Swift was announced as the inaugural recipient of the Artist Director Honors, recognizing her work in music video direction.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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