2015 MTV Video Music Awards

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2015 MTV Video Music Awards
MTV VMA 2015 logo.svg
DateSunday, August 30, 2015 (2015-08-30)
Venue Microsoft Theater (Los Angeles, California)
CountryUnited States
Hosted by Miley Cyrus
Most awards Taylor Swift (4)
Most nominations Taylor Swift (10)
Website www.mtv.com/vma/2015/
Television/radio coverage
Network
Runtime190 minutes
Produced byAmy Doyle
Jesse Ignjatovic
Dave Sirulnick
Van Toffler
Directed by Hamish Hamilton
  2014  · MTV Video Music Awards ·  2016  

The 2015 MTV Video Music Awards were held on August 30, 2015. [3] The 32nd installment of the event was held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California, and hosted by Miley Cyrus. [4] [5] Taylor Swift led the nominations with a total of ten, followed by Ed Sheeran, who had six, [6] [lower-alpha 1] bringing his total number of mentions to 13. Swift's "Wildest Dreams" music video premiered during the pre-show. [7] Cyrus also announced and released her studio album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz , right after her performance at the end of the show. [8] During his acceptance speech, Kanye West announced that he would be running in the 2020 United States presidential election. [9] Taylor Swift won the most awards with four, including Video of the Year and Best Female Video. [10] The VMA trophies were redesigned by Jeremy Scott. [11]

Contents

This 2015 edition was seen by 9.8 million people in the United States during its simulcast across ten Viacom-owned networks. [12] [13] However, the ceremony's airing on the flagship MTV network alone had one of the lowest audience in the ceremony's 31-year history (with the following year's ceremony being the lowest of all time). According to Nielsen, it logged 5.03 million viewers on MTV, 39% less than the previous year, while cumulative viewers drew 9.8 million with the nine other simulcasting networks. The lowest viewed edition since Nielson began tracking in 1994 was in 1996, with 5.07 million viewers. This broadcast, however, broke the "US Twitter record", being the most tweeted about non-sports program, with 21.4 million tweets delivered by 2.2 million people. [14] It was also streamed live through the MTV app for authenticated users on mobile devices and television sets via iOS, Android and Chromecast. Through its website, viewers could also get to see un-aired audience shots and backstage coverage. [15] mtvU aired a behind-the-scenes feed and MTV Hits went dark.

Performances

Artist(s)Song(s)
Pre-show
Walk the Moon "Shut Up and Dance"
"Different Colors"
Todrick Hall Video of the Year nominees' covers
("Uptown Funk", "7/11", "Bad Blood")
Nick Jonas "Levels"
Main show
Nicki Minaj
Taylor Swift
"Trini Dem Girls" (Minaj)
"The Night Is Still Young"
"Bad Blood"
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Eric Nally
Melle Mel
Kool Moe Dee
Grandmaster Caz
"Downtown"
(Live from outside The Orpheum Theatre)
The Weeknd "Can't Feel My Face"
Demi Lovato
Iggy Azalea
"Cool for the Summer"
(Live from outside The Orpheum Theatre)
Justin Bieber "Where Are Ü Now"
"What Do You Mean?"
Tori Kelly "Should've Been Us"
Pharrell Williams "Freedom"
(Live from outside The Orpheum Theatre)
Twenty One Pilots
ASAP Rocky
"Heavydirtysoul"
"M's"
"Message Man"
"Lane Boy"
"LSD"
Miley Cyrus "Dooo It!"

Presenters

Pre-show

Main show

Winners and nominees

The nominations were announced on July 21, 2015 via Apple Music's Beats 1. [17] Nominees for the social media-driven category, Song of Summer, were announced on August 18, 2015. [18] Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar were tied with most nominations, 10. Ed Sheeran had 6, Nicki Minaj had 4.

Video of the Year

Taylor Swift (featuring Kendrick Lamar) – "Bad Blood"

Best Male Video

Mark Ronson (featuring Bruno Mars) – "Uptown Funk"

Best Female Video

Taylor Swift – "Blank Space"

Artist to Watch

Fetty Wap – "Trap Queen"

Best Pop Video

Taylor Swift – "Blank Space"

Best Rock Video

Fall Out Boy – "Uma Thurman"

Best Hip-Hop Video

Nicki Minaj – "Anaconda"

Best Collaboration

Taylor Swift (featuring Kendrick Lamar) – "Bad Blood"

Best Direction

Kendrick Lamar – "Alright" (Directors: Colin Tilley and the Little Homies)

Best Choreography

OK Go – "I Won't Let You Down" (Choreographer: OK Go, air:man and Mori Harano)

Best Visual Effects

Skrillex and Diplo (featuring Justin Bieber) – "Where Are Ü Now" (Visual Effects: Brewer, GloriaFX, Tomash Kuzmytskyi and Max Chyzhevskyy)

Best Art Direction

Snoop Dogg – "So Many Pros" (Art Director: Jason Fijal)

Best Editing

Beyoncé – "7/11" (Editors: Beyoncé, Ed Burke and Jonathan Wing)

Best Cinematography

Flying Lotus (featuring Kendrick Lamar) – "Never Catch Me" (Director of Photography: Larkin Seiple)

Best Video with a Social Message

Big Sean (featuring Kanye West and John Legend) – "One Man Can Change the World"

Song of Summer

5 Seconds of Summer – "She's Kinda Hot"

Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award

Kanye West

See also

Notes

  1. Another nominee, Kendrick Lamar, received four nominations for his video "Alright." The videos for Swift's "Bad Blood" and Flying Lotus' "Never Catch Me" (both of which he features on) earned seven and two nominations respectively—however, those are not counted since he is not the lead artist.

Related Research Articles

The MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction is an award given to the artist, the artist's manager, and the director of the music video. From 1984 to 2006, the full name of the award was Best Direction in a Video, and in 2007, it was briefly renamed Best Director. The category acquired its current name with the 2008 awards.

The MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography is a craft award given to both the artist as well as the cinematographer/director of photography of the music video.

The MTV Video Music Award for Best R&B was first awarded in 1993 under the name Best R&B Video, and it was given every year until 2006. The following year MTV revamped the VMAs and eliminated all the genre categories. However, in 2008, when MTV returned the Video Music Awards to their previous format, Best R&B Video did not return despite four other genre awards doing so. It was only in 2019 that the R&B award returned to the VMAs, now under the shorter name of Best R&B.

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