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Before resigning to eternal Jersey Shore reruns, MTV distinguished itself by uplifting the art of the music video. Its hallmark awards show, the Video Music Awards, became known for letting performers run loose, giving them a chance to really incarnate the entire visual world of their music, no matter how raunchy it was perceived to be. To this day, the VMAs stage is notoriously fertile ground for the bold to push television censorship’s boundaries, with artists often delivering performances that toe the line between performance art and softcore porn.
Since 1984, the MTV VMAs has hosted legendary pop culture moments, from the iconic to the salacious. Feuding R&B divas Monica and Brandy. Reggaeton titans Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar bringing the genre to a U.S. stage for the first time. Playboy cover girl Karol G throwing it back in neon pink. A$AP Rocky grabbing Rihanna’s ass (which she didn’t mind) before they got married. Diana Ross greeting Lil’ Kim with a, um, jiggle.
But who delivered the sexiest moments the VMAs has seen in 42 years of onstage antics?
The Queen of Pop (And Crowd Domination)
Across several decades of VMA performances, Madonna returned several times to the classic wedding aesthetics. You can look as far back as the masc swagger of 1993’s performance of “Bye Bye Baby” to her first time ever taking the iconic stage with “Like A Virgin”, where she rolled around on the floor in a white dress, now married to the life of a superstar.
You don’t even have to look that far back. The second time Madonna performed that song in 2003, what would be her last VMA performance up to this point, she (and Missy Elliot, who showed up after the moment) wore a suit, dressed Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera in wedding dresses, and gave the world a three-way kiss for the ages to the backdrop of “Hollywood.” For a moment, there was pop diva world peace.
This might be the first thing we think about when asked what Madonna’s sexiest moment at the VMAs was, and it might have taken that title if the “Vogue” 1990 performance hadn’t happened. Dressed as Marie Antoinette, Madonna and co. vogued down, fanned themselves, groped, and went under the Queen’s dress more than once.
The VMAs have seen Madonna through five very different stages of a now-legendary career. When she returns to the stage at this show after 23 years, it will be her sixth. Will she be accompanied by the moment’s pop princess (and recent collaborator and Playboy covergirl) Charli XCX? Will there be a white dress? The only certainty is Madonna’s crowd control and never-ending ability to shock with the sensual.
A Snake Charmer
Britney Spears was only nineteen when she performed “Slave 4 U” at the 2001 VMAs. Against a jungle backdrop and opening the show in a cage with a live tiger, the pop princess of the moment (scantily-clad in a blue-green ensemble) and an army of dancers threw it back, twirled and strutted the stage.
The real star-making moment came about halfway, when Spears walked around with a bright-yellow Burmese python live onstage. His name was Banana. The moment has gone down as one of the most iconic images to come out of the VMAs.
While Britney Spears had plenty of other just-as-hot moments at the VMAs (the infamous kiss with Madonna in a mini wedding dress, stripping off a black suit to reveal a shimmering nude two-piece before breaking into a fast-moving performance surrounded by shirtless dancers to a minimalistic rock version “Oops!… I Did It Again”) none really comes as close.
If you watch the performance closely, it goes beyond the snake. It may well be her audacity, there burning with all the fire of a young pop star growing up in front of the world and then claiming her place in culture as a strong, sensual woman.
Hips That Told The Truth
Before a heavy left-turn into electropop (and mainstream global stardom), Colombian superstar Shakira broke out with a rock and roll attitude and a body formed by bellydancing. The year before her third VMA performance, where she appeared onstage in a pink sari and cemented her hips as certified truthtellers alongside Wyclef Jean, Shakira took the VMA stage in 2005 to perform “La Tortura.”
Real ones remember the music video, where she gives one of her most memorable bellydancing performances covered in black sludge as her and Alejandro Sanz played out a love affair and made an entire generation of Latines at least bisexual. Opening her 2005 performance of the song with a video that flashed shots of her mouth open and her torso with “carne” (“meat”) written on her stomach as she breathily retired a monologue about “a game of the flesh”, she was shortly joined by Alejandro Sanz.
Starting on opposite sides of the stage, she sensually danced her way across to him, flexing hips and body at maybe the peak of her powers and at one point suggestively sliding on Sanz. This performance went down as the first time a woman had performed in Spanish at the VMAs — and as one of the steamiest in VMA history.
Ladies’ Night
Two years before the bouncy and revealing purple outfit (complete with a seashell nipple pasty) that counts as her most iconic VMA moment, Lil’ Kim took the stage for a group performance of “Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix)” from her debut album Hard Core alongside Missy Elliott, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, Da Brat, and Angie Martinez in 1997 introduced by Wu Tang Clan. Honestly, “Lady Marmalade” (which Kim also lent a verse to) could never.
All five of the leading ladies of ‘90s rap served a different kind of royalty from a vague Greco-Roman-Egyptian myth theme between throwing down on the mic. Da Brat exploded on a chariot in a gladiator costume, Angie Martinez rapped in a similarly shimmering outfit, and Missy Elliot came in through the audience in her classic streetwear.
The Venusian showstoppers here were Left Eye, looking like a Greek goddess in a shimmering gold bikini top, and Kim herself, wearing a tight gold bikini top, a gold chainmail skirt, and clear six-inch pleasers. Was she a warrior? Was she a goddess? She looked like a legend either way.
In the ‘90s, Prince Made The Crowd “Gett Off”
It probably isn’t a surprise that the man who wrote “Darlin’ Nikki” gave one of the VMA’s most overtly sexual performances. Wearing a highlighter yellow suit cut out in choice places against the dimly lit backdrop of a post-apocalyptic temple on fire, Prince took the VMA stage in 1991 for “Gett Off.” The background dancers weren’t so much following any choreography as much as they were simulating an orgy.
All around, from the piano to the stage, muscular bodies in little more than a thong, grinding on each other (and the piano, and the floor, and Prince) himself) to the tune of the funk rock track. Moving between playing guitar, seducing his way around the stage, gyrating his hips, showing us his (very shapely) ass and singing “now move your big ass ‘round this waist so I can work on that zipper, baby.” He ended the performance with another command, “Make love,” before throwing up a peace sign and turning it into another hand signal by putting his tongue through the middle. Behind him, the sex dungeon temple burned and burned.