A 'self-promotional orgy', an 'incestuous affair … that's about as good as your average yawn', 'little more than a splashy self-aggrandizement' and 'a staggering display of amateurism, egomania and Neanderthal incoherence'.
MTV VMAs Turn 40! A Look Back at the First Show by Trending News
That's what critics had to say about the first MTV Video Music Awards when they aired 40 years ago, on September 14, 1984. And yet, that first edition of the VMAs dominated headlines because it was an awards show more in touch with Generation X than any other at the time.
“We saw an opening for a counterculture awards show that wouldn’t follow the rules of the traditional ceremonies that people were used to seeing,” former MTV promotions director John Sykes told Uproxx in 2015. “We were trying to be the counterculture show because that’s what the network was, that’s what we were trying to be.”
Though their cultural cachet has waned in recent years, the MTV VMAs were must-see TV for decades, and it's all thanks to the popularity of that 1984 show. Here's what happened on this day 40 years ago.
