Although MTV years ago abandoned music videos for reality shows, its annual Video Music Awards (VMAs) remains a barometer of mainstream pop. This year, Beyonce leads the field with eight nominations, followed by Eminem and Iggy Azalea with seven each. The show, now in its 30th year, will be broadcast from the Forum in Inglewood, California, on Sunday at 9pm and will feature performances by Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Maroon 5.
Spontaneous moments in the show have often upstaged the videos. Remember Kanye West interrupting Swift in 2009 or Miley Cyrus gyrating on Robin Thicke last year? But the five nominees for video of the year (four feature women) each have moments that subtly reveal the musicians’ larger artistic identities.
Iggy Azalea (featuring Charli XCX), Fancy
This clip for the breakthrough single by this Australian rapper recreates several scenes from the 1995 teen comedy Clueless, including one in which Azalea wears a red party dress like that made famous by the movie’s heroine, Cher Horowitz. She recreates the scene without parody or fresh insight, a fitting visual for an artist who has been roundly criticised for appropriating American rap culture without meaningfully contributing to it. As a side note, the scene in the movie featured the song Rollin’ With My Homies, by Coolio.
Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball
The moment in the video when Cyrus first writhed naked atop a wrecking ball was a proclamation of unapologetic glee in her bawdy, new pop persona. The same day she released the single, she danced a provocative duet with Thicke at the 2013 music awards, a performance that left many viewers wincing.
Pharrell Williams, Happy
Happy follows Williams as he and friends shimmy around Los Angeles; at one point, he struts down a red carpet in an empty ballroom, wearing a bow tie and a tan Mountie hat — a preview of the headgear that he later wore at the Academy Awards. That hat began a thousand memes and reintroduced him as a benevolent, playful figure of modern R&B-pop.
Beyonce (featuring Jay Z), Drunk in Love
The sultry video for Drunk in Love finds Beyonce and Jay Z on a beach (her in diaphanous layers; him wearing an ostentatious amount of chains). She grins at him as he says, “Know I sling Clint Eastwood/Hope you can handle this curve,” a moment intended as an instinctive, loving reaction that could be read differently in light of the tabloid gossip swirling around the media-savvy couple.
Sia, Chandelier
The singer-songwriter Sia Furler pairs her searing electropop ballad with a performance by the 11-year-old dancer Maddie Ziegler, who twitched and pirouetted in joyously exaggerated positions. No moment captured Sia’s irreverence better than when Maddie wrapped herself in window curtains and pulled her eyelid upward, pantomiming mania in a way that could have been farcical and ugly but was instead endearing.
