Every year we post about the GRAMMY awards and how that organization generally has zero clue what's actually going on in the metal world. It's never surprising and always to be expected. MTV really has no excuse to be this bad, considering their long and storied history with both rock and metal.
The MTV Video Music Awards took place last night and awarded the Best Rock music video to Måneskin's "THE LONELIEST". The nominees were:
- Måneskin – "THE LONELIEST" (winner)
- Foo Fighters – "The Teacher"
- Linkin Park – "Lost (Original Version)"
- Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Tippa My Tongue"
- Metallica – "Lux Æterna"
- Muse – "You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween"
Look, I get it. The MTV Video Music Awards is largely for pop and popular music fans, as is the GRAMMYs and all the other mainstream award ceremonies. But the fact that the MTV Video Music Awards couldn't have thrown a bone to metal (or had a metal category at all), especially when looking back at a year like 2022, is a little shitty.
2022 was a year with new albums and music videos from high-profile bands (outside Metallica) like Ghost, Rammstein, Ozzy Osbourne, Slipknot, and Five Finger Death Punch – arguably all names that folks outside the rock and metal worlds would recognize. But nope! Metallica got stuffed in with Måneskin and a Linkin Park bonus track music video. Which isn't shade on either artist – they didn't put together the list of nominees.
It just feels like a bummer considering what MTV used to be. This was the channel that gave the world classic unplugged albums from Nirvana and Alice In Chains; the channel that expanded the musical palette of so many teenagers in the '80s and '90s, including the metal world with Headbanger's Ball. And now we've got metal repped by only Metallica at an award show.
Though what else did you expect from a TV network whose programming is largely one reality show these days?
