Video Music Awards 2015

The 2015 MTV Video Music Awards is happening at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California, and hosted by Miley Cyrus^.  Taylor Swift leads the nominations with a total of 10, followed by Ed Sheeran, who has six. Another nominee, Kendrick Lamar, received four nominations for his video “Alright“.  However, the videos for Swift’s “Bad Blood” and Flying Lotus‘ “Never Catch Me” (both of which he features on) earned seven and two nominations respectively, bringing his total number of mentions to 13. Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” music video will premiere during the pre-show.

An MTV Video Music Award (commonly abbreviated as a VMA) is an award presented by the cable channel MTV to honor the best in the music video medium. Originally conceived as an alternative to the Grammy Awards (in the video category), the annual MTV Video Music Awards 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.^[2] The statue given to winners is an astronaut on the moon, one of the earliest representations of MTV, and colloquially called a “moonman”. The statue was conceived by Manhattan Design—also designers of the original MTV logo—based on the 1981 “Top of the Hour” animation created by Fred Seibert, produced by Alan Goodman, and produced by Buzz Potamkin at Buzzco Associates.The statue is now made by New York firm, Society Awards.

The annual VMA ceremony occurs before the end of summer and held either in late August or mid-September, and broadcast live on MTV, along with simulcasts on MTV’s sister networks to nullify in-house competition. 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 and Las Vegas.