The Ten Best VMA Performances Of All Time
By Ani Bundel
We run down the Top Ten VMA performances of all time ahead of tonight’s show.
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The MTV Music Video Awards are tonight. The iconic channel began their own awards program only a few years after their 1981 launch, in September of 1984. At the time, it was conceived as an alternate to the Grammys, which did not consider “music videos” to be an art form worth honoring. From the first, the show has contained iconic moments, from Madonna rolling around on the floor in a wedding dress, to Prince in assless pants to Britney and the snake.
Since the first, it’s been a “start of the school year” type phenomenon, aimed at being the water cooler talk of high schools everywhere. Ironically, it does that via live performances, despite actually being an award show for videos. (This disparity is most notable in that many live acts at the VMAs lipsync, because they are video based acts.)
With yet another year about to descend on us and still no idea what the biggest performance of the night will be (there are apparently no less than *four* surprise acts booked for this evening, according to some sources), we count down the most stunning live performances of the last 30-plus years.