Like with its expanded and inclusive Movie And TV Awards, MTV has decided to take its Video Music Awards in a more progressive direction this year, removing gendered categories, adding in the politically minded Best Fight Against The System Award, and replacing the old Moonman trophy with a gender-neutral Moon Person. Before the show started MTV started to make this point about progressiveness clear by announcing that several transgender members of the military would be in attendance—a clear dig at Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.
The show itself was the sort of big spectacle you’d expect from the VMAs, with a fiery Kendrick Lamar and a literally fiery swordsman kicking things off before host Katy Perry took the stage, and from there everybody did their best to earnestly hammer in a fairly omnipresent political message about how things are bad and we should all work together to make them better. Also, Lorde had the flu, so her whole performance was just her silently dancing to her own song. It was weird, but also sort of cool.
The full list of winners is below.
MTV Video Music Awards 2017 Winners
Best Pop Video
Fifth Harmony, “Down”
Best Dance Video
Alessia Cara and Zedd, “Stay”
Best Song Of The Summer
Lil Uzi Vert, “XO Tour Llif3"
Best Choreography
Kanye West (Teyana Taylor, Guapo, Jae Blaze, and Derek ‘Bentley’ Watkins), “Fade”
Best Collaboration
Taylor Swift and Zayn, “I Don’t Want To Live Forever”
Best Hip-Hop Video
Kendrick Lamar, “Humble”
Best Fight Against The System (tie)
Logic, “Black SpiderMan”
The Hamilton Mixtape, “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)“
Big Sean, “Light”
Alessia Cara, “Scars To Your Beautiful”
Taboo ft. Shailene Woodley, “Stand Up/Stand N Rock #NoDAPL”
John Legend, “Surefire”
Video Of The Year
Kendrick Lamar, “Humble”
Artist Of The Year
Ed Sheeran
Best New Artist
Khalid