A Brief Guide To The VMAs For British People Who Don't Have Sky

If you enjoy the buttocks of popstars and trawling the Internet for a live stream that has all the quality of watching festival footage from the 90s on a dial-up connection, you're probably interested in the VMAs. If you're British, you're probably just in desperate need of a televised music event that is not presented by James Corden (or anybody who laughs at their own jokes and cries at pre-packaged VTs about how Elbow made their album).

Last year will mostly be remembered as the moment Miley Cyrus dry humped us all towards a cultural metapocalypse that swept across the Internet and left nothing but think pieces about twerking in its wake. This year was a classier and more political affair, but with hopefully enough shock factor to hammer the nail into the coffin of Robin Thicke’s short-lived career so we can all move on with our lives. Spoiler: there were no ice buckets.

Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Jessie J… the whole entourage was out in full force to represent the cream of UK Beige or, as America would call it, “beautifully simple” music. There are people in the world who love sad white boys even more than The Brit Awards panel, and they were all at the VMAs, crying along with Miley.

Maroon 5 were the “rock performance” for the evening and Lorde won Best Rock Video, beating out artists like Arctic Monkeys and Imagine Dragons. Argue all you like about the integrity of rock and how it’s “not real” unless someone is doing an 8-minute guitar solo with their legs further apart than Avril Lavigne and one of her fans at a meet-and-greet, but Lorde has been railing against materialism with all the charisma of a young Kate Bush and performed live with Nirvana where as the most “rock” thing Alex Turner has done this year is drop a microphone on the floor (and it wasn’t even his!!!). So yeah, they gave her this award so they could give her something, but that's better than Imagine Dragons feeling any more validated than they already do.

Usher’s career has had more peaks and troughs than a burn victim, but at the moment it's definitely on a high. Introduced by Laverne Cox as a performer “the ladies in prison would love”, Usher came out with an extra funky version of “She Came To Give It To You” wearing an all-white suit and pelivcly spasming, suggesting there's still life in the old chap yet. Then he slapped the bass for a bit and shoulder-popped on Nicki Minaj’s arse. That bit was a bit cheap actually, but it should delay his inevitable appearance on Dancing With The Stars for another two years.

Nothing says inter-Western culture shock like OK Go being nominated for two VMAs in 2014. Presumably they are one of the very few bands that appeared on the soundtrack for The O.C. whose career didn’t take a rapid and spectacular nosedive into an indie graveyard filled with V-neck golf sweaters and Seth Cohen’s CD collection.

It wouldn’t be an awards ceremony without Miley doing something “outrageous”, even when she’s not on stage. This time, she sent up a young homeless man called Jesse Helt to accept her Video Of The Year award for Wrecking Ball and draw attention the issue of homelessness in the speech. Aside from literally being the plot of a film starring Michael Pitt in which he plays a homeless actor who accidentally befriends a pop star called ‘K’Harma’ and then gets famous because he’s hot, it’s probably one of the more genuine things Miley has done with her career in the last year. Also, fuck Los Angeles where even the homeless people are fit.

Blue Ivy danced along to “Flawless”, said “Go mummy!” on stage and ended Katy Perry’s life with a single wave. Not even The Beatles managed to emotionally dominate a room of people with such little effort and there were four of them. As the physical chalice containing the brilliance of ‘Yonce and Jay-Z combined, her global domination is pretty much pre-empted. Her presence at the VMAs, was not similar to Jesus's on the mount - although instead of fish and loaves she made flem and poop. I know it's never going to happen, but I really really want her to leave college and get a job in HR or city planning or something and never, ever end up like Willow Smith.