Taylor Swift won big, Chappell Roan took on the paparazzi and Eminem is officially back: top moments from the VMAs

If there’s one thing you needed to know about the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, it’s that this was Taylor Swift’s race to lose.
Hours after her much-talked-about endorsement of Kamala Harris for president in the upcoming U.S. election, the pop megastar walked the black carpet at the UBS Arena in New York City as the awards show’s most-nominated performer, looking to break Beyoncé’s record number of wins. If you want to do the math: Beyoncé has 30 Moonmen statuettes, Swift had 23 going into the night. She was nominated for 12 awards so she wouldn’t even have to win in every category to have a shot at making VMA history.
The award show’s unique selling point is that the public votes on who wins what. The will of the people this year reveal a fascinating turning point in the music industry: While older, established names like Swift, Ariana Grande and Eminem lead the nominations, a relative newcomer like Sabrina Carpenter (whose earworm “Espresso” was the song of this summer) tied the latter two in the nominations stakes.
That we might be witnessing a change of the guard, even as Swift reigns supreme, is also evidenced by the fact that this year saw 29 first-time nominees, including Chappell Roan, Teddy Swims and Benson Boone. Something they all have in common? All came to fame courtesy of social media.
Here are all the biggest moments from the 40th edition of the VMAs, hosted by Megan Thee Stallion.
Chappell Roan — whose viral “HOT TO GO!” has been called Gen Z’s “YMCA” — seems to have gotten into a minor kerfuffle with a photographer heading into the show.
Wearing a Y/Projects outfit with a heavily medieval vibe, Roan pointed at someone in the bank of people shooting photos and said, “You shut the —— up,” and then, “Don’t. Not me, b——.” It seems to suggest that whatever was being shouted at her didn’t pass muster, although it’s not clear exactly what she may have been responding to.
Not one but two pop stars recycled looks worn by celebs in the ‘90s: Sabrina Carpenter wore a Bob Mackie gown that Madonna, then in her Marilyn Monroe era, wore to the 1991 Oscars. Halsey, also nominated tonight, followed suit in a leopard Versace last worn by Elizabeth Hurley in 1996.
No stranger to going viral, TikToker-turned-”Diet Pepsi” singer Addison Rae made a style statement in a lingerie set accented by a tulle train. The internet loved or hated it, making it one of the carpet’s most talked about outfits.
Continuing the streak of corset tops-and-thigh-high-boots from the U.S. Open, Swift wore a plaid Dior gown from the Parisian atelier’s 2025 resort collection. Because Swift is famous for hiding hints about her future plans in her outfits, it was instantly dissected for Easter eggs. The conclusion? Swift seems to have been signalling a return to the rock esthetic of her Reputation era, which just so happens to be one of two remaining Taylor’s Version re-records she’s yet to drop. Mid-show, she changed into a sequinned Monse mini dress featuring a spaceship flying across her torso.
The show — originally meant to be Tuesday night but was moved to accommodate the presidential debate — falls on the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Swift, who won the night’s first award for her collaboration with Post Malone on her single “Fortnight,” paused to acknowledge the moment. “Waking up this morning in New York on Sept. 11, I’ve just been thinking about what happened 23 years ago,” she said. “Everyone who lost a loved one, and everyone that we lost, and that is the most important thing about today.”
Guess who’s back? Eminem opened the show with “Houdini,” a track off his new album. The men in identical wigs who were his backup dancers, however, were pure 2000, nodding back to his iconic VMAs performance of “The Real Slim Shady,” which saw him surrounded by look-alikes.
The show was filled with nods to iconic moments from the show’s 40-year history: Megan Thee Stallion briefly draped in a yellow python as a nod to Britney Spears “Slave 4 U,” Cyndi Lauper, who won an award at the first VMAs in 1984, introduced Sabrina Carpenter’s performance.
In what seems like a genuinely unscripted surprise, rapper Flava Flav — who also happens to have sponsored the U.S. water polo team at the Paris Olympics — surprised his presenting partner, gymnast Jordan Chiles, with one of his signature clock necklaces to “replace the medal they tried to take from you.” This of course, is a reference to the bronze that Chiles lost at the Paris Olympics after her score was incorrectly readjusted. “And I got your prize money, too,” added the rapper to a stunned Chiles.
Petty? Perhaps, but Sabrina Carpenter’s choice to sing a song that explicitly deals with the love triangle she found herself in with Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello while both parties were in the audience is exactly the kind of moment the VMAs were made for.
If you’re not up on your tittle-tattle: Carpenter and Mendes briefly dated, right before he and Cabello briefly rekindled their years-long relationship. Things, it seemed, got messy. Carpenter aims her pen straight at the couple in “Taste,” a song off her new album, with lyrics like, “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true, You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you.”
Mendes, who debuted new music at the show, seems to have been in on the joke, captioning an Instagram post before the show, “Pulling up to my own funeral,” seemingly a nod to the funeral scene in the music video for “Taste.”
If Freddie Mercury and a champion gymnast were whizzed in a blender — with a dash of Harry Styles’ bedazzled jumpsuits — you’d get indie rocker Benson Boone’s performance. Not only did he treat the crowd to some impressive vocal maneuvers while singing his hit “Beautiful Things,” he executed multiple somersaults and flips, leaping off risers and a piano and landing on his feet every time. And he never went off key!
“I did that all on the first day of my period,” said Katy Perry after performing a medley of her greatest hits—Teenage Dream, I Kissed A Girl, E.T., Firework, all of which Taylor Swift and Suki Waterhouse danced enthusiastically along to from the audience—as part of her acceptance of the MTV Video Vanguard Award, the night’s lifetime achievement gong. “There are no decade-long accidents,” she said before thanking the “village of people,” who have helped her sustain her career. She gave a special shout out to the LGBTQ community, who she said she would not be here without, and who taught her you can be both “kind and c—t.”
She dedicated the award to her husband, Orlando Bloom, who introduced her, and her daughter: “for my Daisy, the only flowers I’ll ever need.” She concluded with some sage advice for younger musicians: “One of the biggest reasons I’m standing here now is that I learned to block out the noise,” she said, advising them to “turn off social media, touch grass, and do what you were born to do.”
The South African singer won best Afrobeats for her global smash hit, “Water.” As she accepted the honour, she took a moment to make an important point: African music is not a monolith. “African music can be pop music too. This is just so special but also bittersweet because I know there’s a tendency to group all African artists under Afrobeats,” she said. “African music is so diverse, it’s more than just Afrobeats.”
After giving a pyro-filled, Joan of Arc-referencing performance of her hit song “Good Luck, Babe,” Roan became possibly the first artist to ever accept the best new artist award with a moleskin notebook in hand. She read her acceptance speech from her “diary,” dedicating the award to the drag queens who inspire her, and “queer kids in the midwest. I see you, I understand you, because I am one of you.”
“Everything this man touches turns to happiness, fun and magic,” Taylor said of Travis Kelce in her acceptance speech for video of the year, the big award of the night. It’s the first time, by the way, that she’s officially called him her boyfriend. She did not, however, announce Reputation (Taylor’s Version). The wait continues!