Since 2009,
Drake has become a cross-genre streaming star, while Swift’s glow-up has transformed her into a blockbuster brand – and their co-command of ‘pop 2.0’ isn’t wavering yetThe decade in music: read all the essays in the seriesThe 2009
MTV Video Music awards represented a sea change for pop, the kindling of a handful of narratives that would shape its immediate future. The show started in mourning, with dancers paying tribute to one of pop’s original megastars, Michael Jackson, who had died three months earlier. When Janet Jackson emerged to perform their angry 1995 duet Scream,
Beyoncé – the Jacksons’ heir apparent – looked giddy as a super fan. The type of megastar the Jacksons had helped create alongside
Madonna and Prince – a spectacle-heavy mix of theatre, otherworldliness and determination – was present in a returning, and apparently rehabilitated, Britney Spears, and new pretenders
Katy Perry,
Lady Gaga and, of course, Beyoncé. But the night also represented ground zero for two of the forthcoming decade’s most influential artists,
Taylor Swift and Drake, whose professional ambitions saw them adapt in divergent ways to a shifting landscape exploded by pop’s globalisation and a pervading please-all-comers mentality.
The show gave Drake his first ever VMA nomination for the soppy Best I Ever Had, a song that set the template for the softly melodic, minimalist fusion of sad-boi hip-hop and R&B that would eventually become pop’s dominant mode. For the then 19-year-old Swift,
Kanye West interrupting her speech for best female video started a ripple-effect that would threaten to consume them both for the next decade. It also served as the catalyst for Swift’s transformation from country star to the subject of global discourse (Obama famously got involved, calling West a “jackass”). This unplanned cultural shift precipitated her move towards a more universal, pan-demographic sound – out went the country-pop scaffolding and in came Max Martin-assisted turbo pop on 2012’s Red.