The eternal dissonance of the MTV Video Music Awards ostensibly celebrating a form no longer actively promoted on the brand’s flagship channel has long made the show a tricky tightrope to be walked. It’s led to a lot of confusion in category nomenclature, of course — with the nouns disappearing from categories like “best pop” and “best hip-hop,” and artists now accepting awards like “song of the summer” and “best album” that are totally divorced from the music video format. But a much bigger concern for the VMAs than what awards they should be giving out in 2025 is who they’re putting the show on for the first place: the kids who have been the lifeblood of the channel’s audience for over 40 years now, or the millennials who actually remember when music videos on MTV still moved the culture

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