Apparently, the Video Music Awards need to die. It’s a familiar argument after Sunday night’s ceremony. GQ declared the VMAs “cooked,” arguing that a show once built around what was happening in music right now felt strangely disconnected from it. Cosmopolitan made a related argument: the VMAs have become too polished and predictable, losing the pop-culture chaos that once separated them from every other awards show.
Viewers weren’t exactly rushing to defend them. One r/Music thread asking why the VMAs even exist anymore drew hundreds of upvotes, with viewers complaining that the show felt scripted, boring and increasingly like a popularity contest. Another discussion about Ariana Grande, Zara Larsson and Harry Styles skipping the ceremony drew thousands. Reddit is not Nielsen data, obviously, but it’s still useful as a snapshot of how aggressively some music fans have turned on the show.
And, look, I understand the argument. MTV isn’t really Music Television anymore. Music videos don’t need a television network to distribute them. The genuinely unhinged VMA moments people still talk about happened years—or decades—ago. Half the fun used to be having absolutely no idea what might happen next, while now whatever does happen can be clipped, posted, memed, criticized and forgotten before the actual broadcast makes it through another commercial break.
There is just one slightly inconvenient problem with the funeral: 8.43 million people watched. That was the VMAs’ largest same-day audience since 2015, according to Paramount’s Nielsen-based ratings report. So maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe it isn’t whether the VMAs are still relevant, but maybe it’s why we keep declaring them irrelevant while continuing to watch, post, argue and apparently hold funerals for them every September.
The 2026 VMAs Had an Identity Crisis, and Viewers Were Not Quiet About It
The VMAs were created in 1984 as an awards show for a television network built around music videos. Forty-two years later, neither half of that equation works the same way. MTV is no longer where people wait to discover music videos, and YouTube and social media have eliminated the need for a television network to decide when everyone gets to see them.
The 2026 ceremony occasionally seemed just as confused about what a live VMA broadcast is supposed to accomplish. Sunday’s ceremony started on schedule inside the Peacock Theater, but CBS was still airing Ravens-Cowboys after the NFL game ran long. The actual VMAs continued while a huge chunk of the television audience waited. And this wasn’t a normal TV delay where you know what’s happening. This was the kind where nobody watching television knew what the hell was going on. The VMAs were happening. The opening performance was happening. People inside the theater were watching it.
Meanwhile, CBS viewers waited more than 20 minutes for the show they thought they were already supposed to be watching. And because this is 2026, the internet wasn’t waiting with us. Photos and clips from inside the theater were already appearing online before CBS viewers had actually seen what was happening.
Longtime VMA producer Van Toffler later explained to Rolling Stone that the television broadcast was roughly 20 minutes behind the ceremony. He described seeing photos from the opening appearing online before the television audience saw it as a “moment of terror” and acknowledged that viewers should have been given better information about the delay.
Honestly, the entire thing was extremely VMA, and not necessarily in the way MTV intended, but still. One of the biggest questions facing the show is why anyone should sit through a live television broadcast when every interesting moment will be online almost immediately. Then the VMAs managed to create a situation where the internet could spoil the live show for people actively trying to watch the live show.
That doesn’t mean MTV caused an NFL game to run long. But if you’re trying to convince people there’s still value in appointment television, making the people who actually kept the appointment wonder what the fuck is happening isn’t exactly helping the case.
And the confusion exposed a bigger problem with the ceremony itself: Some awards were announced outside the main telecast. Several major contemporary artists didn’t attend. And much of the criticism after the show wasn’t simply that the VMAs weren’t as exciting as they used to be—it was that the ceremony no longer seems particularly good at representing what’s happening in music now.
GQ pointed directly at that problem, questioning a ceremony hosted by Snoop Dogg and dominated by established stars while artists central to the current musical landscape were missing.
The criticism shouldn’t be dismissed just because people tuned in. The modern VMAs still seem unsure about what they’re supposed to reward, who they’re supposed to be for or why watching the entire broadcast is better than watching the five interesting clips the next morning. But the strangest thing about criticizing the modern VMAs is the show we’re comparing them to.
The VMAs Cannot Compete With 40 Years of Their Own Greatest Hits
Ask someone to explain what made the VMAs great and nobody starts talking about voting procedures. They talk about Madonna performing “Like a Virgin” in a wedding dress. Britney Spears bringing out a snake. Madonna kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Lady Gaga ending “Paparazzi” covered in fake blood. Kanye West taking a microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hand. Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke doing whatever the hell that was.
The mythology of the VMAs isn’t really about awards. It’s about stuff happening. And that’s an almost impossible standard for a single modern ceremony to meet. We’re comparing one night in 2026 against a highlight reel assembled from more than four decades of television. Of course Sunday didn’t produce six culturally enormous moments at once. Neither did most individual ceremonies we now lump together as the VMA “golden age.”
We’ve basically edited 40 years of the VMAs down to the absolutely batshit parts and forgotten the boring acceptance speeches, awkward presenters, commercial breaks and performances nobody remembers, but there is something missing. Cosmopolitan’s Samantha Olson argued that the VMAs have become too polished and safe, losing the unpredictability that once made the show different. GQ’s Zach Baron made a related—and arguably more important—point: the VMAs no longer adequately reflect where music culture actually is. That’s harder to dismiss as simple nostalgia. And viewers noticed.
In the r/popheads live thread, one of the recurring complaints was that the VMAs used to be the messy relative of respectable awards shows—the place where something unpredictable could actually happen. But I also don’t think the answer is trying to manufacture the old chaos. Nobody needs Snoop Dogg to tackle a presenter so the internet has something to discuss Monday morning. The reason those old moments became iconic is that they felt like something had actually gone off script. And that’s the difference: The old VMAs were unpredictable in an era when celebrity culture was much more controlled.
Now celebrity chaos is available approximately every 11 seconds. Someone is melting down on TikTok before breakfast. We really don’t need the VMAs to recreate the chaos. They need to recreate the feeling that something could happen there that could only really happen there. The chaos isn’t scarce anymore, and the VMAs need another reason for everyone to show up at the same time.
Oddly, Sunday’s ceremony may have demonstrated what that reason could be.
The VMAs Still Work Best When Music History Meets What’s Happening Now
There was always going to be a moment for Dolly Parton.
The country legend died August 25 at 80, barely a month before the VMAs, and Kacey Musgraves performed “I Will Always Love You” as the ceremony paid tribute to her. Taylor Swift later dedicated her Video of the Year win for “The Fate of Ophelia” to Dolly, calling her the “ultimate showgirl” and praising the vivid storytelling in her songs.
It was one of several moments when the ceremony’s history-heavy approach actually made sense. Madonna’s first VMA performance in 23 years was an obvious nostalgia play, but it also understood something the ceremony occasionally forgets: if you’re going to use MTV history, do something with it. Her performance with Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX connected artists from different eras rather than simply trying to recreate 1984.
And then the show kept doing versions of that. Nirvana received the Video Vanguard Award. LISA became the first K-pop solo artist to perform at the VMAs. Sienna Spiro performed and won Best New Artist. RAYE, Sombr, Teddy Swims and Adam Lambert took part in the George Michael tribute. GENER8ION and Yung Lean brought the viral “Storm” video to the stage. Pitchfork’s performance roundup documents the night’s sprawling—and occasionally bizarre—mix of performers.
Not all of it worked. That’s important too.
Pitchfork called the George Michael tribute lineup “perplexing,” and the broader criticism that the show leaned too heavily on established names while major current artists stayed home doesn’t disappear simply because younger performers were technically present. But the idea underneath it works. The VMAs have something newer awards shows don’t have: 42 years of music-video history. The trick is using that history without turning the ceremony into a museum.
Then there was Taylor Swift. Swift received the inaugural Artist Director Honors, won Video of the Year for “The Fate of Ophelia” and Best Direction for “Opalite,” and premiered the video for “Patient Zero.” Pitchfork’s winners list documents the night’s awards. There is something almost comically obvious about the Video Music Awards finally creating an honor specifically recognizing an artist’s work behind the camera.
But maybe obvious isn’t bad. Maybe giving Artist Director Honors to someone directing her own videos gives the VMAs a reason for the word video to remain in the title. And “Patient Zero” did something else that’s become increasingly difficult for an awards show to do: It created an appointment. If you wanted to see it when everyone else saw it, there was a reason to be watching right then. That’s the part I think the VMAs should be chasing.
MTV doesn’t need to become the place where everyone waits all afternoon for a new music video again. That world is gone. But the VMAs can still be the place where artists make music videos feel like events. Premiere them there. Recognize directors. Let artists do something specifically for that stage. Put the people who created MTV’s visual history beside the people figuring out what comes next.
YouTube can give us every music video whenever we want it. What it can’t completely replicate is the feeling that something is happening right now, and millions of other people are seeing it for the first time with you. For one night, the VMAs can still create an appointment.
If the VMAs Are Dead, 8.4 Million People Apparently Attended the Funeral
This is where the obituary gets complicated. The headline number is 8.43 million viewers, but that number doesn’t exist in a vacuum. According to Paramount’s Nielsen-based breakdown, CBS accounted for 7.61 million viewers. MTV’s simulcast averaged 686,000, with another 142,000 watching the encore. Overall viewership was up 51 percent from 2025, while the show generated 31.1 million social interactions and 159 million video views.
So, yes, the overwhelming majority of the television audience watched the MTV Video Music Awards on CBS, which is such a perfect encapsulation of the show’s identity crisis that I’m not sure I could invent a better one. And then there’s football. The NFL gave CBS an enormous lead-in, which has to be part of the ratings conversation. Taylor Swift gave her fans a reason to tune in. Dolly’s tribute gave country fans one. Nirvana brought another generation. Newer performers brought their own audiences.
So 8.43 million viewers isn’t proof that MTV has somehow reclaimed its old cultural dominance. And it definitely doesn’t mean the people who watched thought the show was good. Some clearly didn’t. The Reddit threads after the ceremony were full of people calling the VMAs boring, questioning the nominations and asking why the show still exists. One r/popheads discussion about putting the VMAs “out of its misery” drew hundreds of upvotes. Again, Reddit isn’t a scientific cross-section of the audience—but if we’re talking about cultural relevance, what music fans say about the show after watching it is part of the story.
That’s why the number interests me. Attention isn’t automatically relevance. People still showed up. Some watched because they genuinely love the VMAs. Some wanted Taylor. Some wanted Dolly’s tribute or Nirvana. Some were already watching football. Some apparently tuned in and hated the fucking thing. But they were still participating in the same cultural event at the same time.
And after watching the show, I don’t think the answer is trying to manufacture another Kanye-and-Taylor moment or desperately recreating every piece of chaos from MTV’s past. But I also don’t want the VMAs to become another polished awards show where everybody walks the carpet, performs the new single, thanks their publicist and goes home.
The show was strongest when something happened that felt like it could only really happen there. A legend being remembered by artists who came after her. A band forever intertwined with MTV returning to receive the Video Vanguard Award. Taylor premiering a video instead of just showing up to collect another trophy. Artists from completely different generations sharing the same stage. And, occasionally, things going completely off the rails. That’s the VMA part the VMAs need to keep.
Maybe that’s the actual problem with declaring the VMAs dead. Dead things don’t usually require this much discourse about whether they’re dead. The VMAs aren’t what thaccey were in 1984, 1995, 2003 or 2009. Of course they aren’t. MTV isn’t the same. The music industry isn’t the same. Celebrity isn’t the same. Television isn’t the same. The way we consume music videos isn’t remotely the same.
We aren’t the same. Trying to turn the ceremony back into the VMAs of 20 or 40 years ago would be ridiculous. But becoming another perfectly polished awards show isn’t the answer either. The VMAs have more than four decades of visual music history, a format built around spectacle and a name practically begging artists to do something interesting with the medium it supposedly celebrates. Use the history. Stop trying to live inside it. Give current artists a reason to want that stage. Make the awards matter enough to actually show them. Make the videos matter. And, for the love of God, if the ceremony has already started, tell the people watching television what the fuck is going on.
The 2026 show wasn’t proof that the VMAs are completely fine. It was proof that people haven’t stopped caring whether they are. And for an awards show everyone keeps trying to bury, 8.43 million people is a hell of a turnout for the funeral.
