The VMAs of 2025 will not be remembered for shock value—no Madonna kiss, no Kanye interruption. Instead, they will be remembered for something subtler but perhaps more enduring: the normalisation of queer identity at the centre of pop spectacle.
Image: Getty Lady Gaga accepts Artist of the Year wearing Marc Jacobs Fall 2025 at the 2025 MTV VMAsYou can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
On Sunday night, the MTV Video Music Awards returned to New York, staged this year at UBS Arena and presided over by LL Cool J. The show has long been a cultural barometer—part red-carpet pageant, part political theatre—and in 2025 it leaned heavily into its reputation as a showcase for spectacle, queerness, and the uneasy marriage between pop and politics.
Lady Gaga arrived with twelve nominations, including the coveted Artist of the Year, Song of the Year, and Video of the Year. By the evening’s end she had taken home Artist of the Year and delivered what was arguably the performance of the night: a duet with Bruno Mars of their single Die With a Smile, staged with an operatic sense of drama. That Gaga—an artist whose career has been inseparable from queer advocacy—was the evening’s centrepiece was no accident.
The VMAs, often dismissed as frivolous, have in recent years cultivated an increasingly political identity. This year’s show foregrounded queer voices and allies. Sabrina Carpenter performed her viral track Manchild with a wink to the politics of gender and performance. ROSÉ, a star forged in the crucible of K-pop’s global reach, shared the stage with Mars for APT., collapsing borders of genre and geography. Alex Warren, who has spoken openly about his queer identity, was awarded Best New Artist—a rare nod to authenticity in a business usually defined by careful concealment. For us, we still love Lola Young, even though she carried no prize that night.
Mariah Carey and Ricky Martin, both icons of queer devotion, were honoured with tributes that felt less like nostalgia than recognition of longevity. Carey, who has been folded into the pop canon for decades, added Best R&B (Type Dangerous) to her crowded shelf. Martin, meanwhile, was named the first-ever Latin Icon, a reminder of the global reach of Latin pop long before the genre became algorithmically inevitable.
Elsewhere, Tate McRae’s Just Keep Watching—from the soundtrack of F1: The Movie—claimed Song of the Summer. The Canadian artist’s win underscored how cinema and music increasingly exist as a cross-promotional loop, each medium borrowing lustre from the other. The Alternative category was won by sombr for back to friends, an atmospheric track emblematic of pop’s porous borders with indie.
The VMAs are as much about appearances as awards. The so-called “pink carpet” was dominated by Ariana Grande in sculptural pastel, Billie Eilish in deliberately oversized tailoring, and Charli XCX in an outfit that was at once subversive and referential. Fashion at the VMAs operates as a parallel text: a visual grammar of rebellion and allegiance, often more enduring than the songs themselves.
If the event has often been accused of prioritising virality over artistry, Sunday’s show suggested that the two are now inseparable. Carpenter’s performance was designed for TikTok loops; Gaga and Mars’s duet will be replayed in high definition on YouTube for years. The VMAs understand their afterlife better than most institutions: what matters is not the live broadcast but the fragments cut, shared, and endlessly recontextualised online.
For MTV, an institution that has weathered years of accusations of irrelevance, the formula seems to be working. The network is no longer the arbiter of taste it once was in the early 1990s, when the channel itself could launch a career. Instead, the VMAs have become a ritualised annual spectacle, a reminder that pop music is a space where aesthetics and identity collide, and where queerness is not merely tolerated but increasingly celebrated.
Still, the awards’ ability to balance politics and performance remains precarious. To foreground queerness in a broadcast supported by corporate sponsors is, in some sense, to domesticate it—to turn protest into content. The danger lies in conflating representation with liberation. Queer voices were present at the VMAs, yes, but framed within a structure that remains largely profit-driven.
And yet, despite that contradiction—or perhaps because of it—the show retains its power. For queer teenagers in small towns, seeing Gaga crowned, Carpenter defiant, or Warren victorious may be more than spectacle. It may be the first glimpse of a cultural landscape where their identities are visible, celebrated, and—if only for a few hours on a Sunday night in New York—central to the story pop music tells about itself.
Image: Getty Sombr wears Valentino on the MTV VMAs red carpet
YoungBlud. Photo: Getty Images
Ricky Martin. Photo: Getty Images
Conan Gray Photo: Getty Images
Kevin Aviance Photo: Getty ImagesList of Key Winners (selection). Full list you can find here.
• Artist of the Year: Lady Gaga
•Video of the Year & Best Pop & Best Pop Artist: Ariana Grande for “Brighter Days Ahead”
• Song of the Year: Rosé & Bruno Mars for “APT”
• Best New Artist: Alex Warren
• Best Pop Artist: Sabrina Carpenter
• Best Hip-Hop: Doechii for “Anxiety”
• Best R&B: Mariah Carey for “Type Dangerous”
• Best Alternative: Sombr for “Back to Friends”
• Best Rock & Best Group: Coldplay for “All My Love”
• Song of the Summer: Tate McRae for “Just Keep Watching”
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
* * *
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know.
* * *
You can listen to our podcast Queer News & Journalism on your favourite platform or go to our YouTube Channel @GAY45mag.
* * *
Let us know what you think at [email protected].
* * *
Submit a letter to the editor at [email protected].
* * *
We appreciate it. Thanks for reading.
