Remembering the First MTV VMAs, 40 Years Later — Bette Midler & Dan Aykroyd Hosted?!
A “self-promotional orgy,” an “incestuous affair … ranking right up there with your average yawn,” “little more than splashy self-aggrandizement,” and “a dismaying exhibition of amateurism, egomania, and Neanderthal incoherence.”
That’s what critics had to say about the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards when it aired 40 years ago, on September 14, 1984. And yet that first iteration of the VMAs dominated headlines as an awards show more in touch with Gen X than others at the time.
“We saw an opening for a counterculture awards show that would not follow the rules of the traditional ceremonies people were used to seeing,” former MTV promotions director John Sykes told Uproxx in 2015. “We tried to be the counterculture show because that’s what the network was, that’s what we were trying to be.”
Though its cultural cachet has waned recently, the MTV VMAs were must-see TV for decades, and it’s all thanks to the popularity of that 1984 show. Here’s what went down on this day 40 years ago.
Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler hosted the 1984 VMAs
Aykroyd, then famous for Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters, and Midler, then famous for The Rose and her Grammy-winning music career, took the stage of Radio City Music Hall wearing silvery spacesuits matching that of the Moonman trophy.
Aykroyd hyped up the show’s galactic proportions, and Midler quipped, “What about my galactic proportions, huh? You can’t even see them in this suit. Here I am standing in front of the hippest crowd in the history of the world, and I look exactly like a baked potato.”
Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” and The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” were the most-nominated videos
Speaking of stars today’s MTV viewers would never recognize, jazz musician Hancock and new wave group The Police (fronted by Sting, pictured here) had videos that led the 1984 VMAs’ nominations, with eight apiece. Those entrants went head to head in the Video of the Year, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, and Viewer’s Choice categories.
Cyndi Lauper was the most-nominated artist of the night
Thanks to two hit videos — “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “Time After Time” — Lauper was the artist with the highest total of nominations at the 1984 VMAs. In fact, the Brooklyn balladeer competed against herself in the Best Female Video race, which she won with her “Girls.”
Herbie Hancock won the most awards
Hancock’s “Rockit” won the Moonmen for Best Concept Video, Most Experimental Video, Best Special Effects, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing. The video also got awards for most innovative video and best art direction at Billboard’s Video Music Awards, a now-defunct rival of the MTV VMAs.
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” won three awards — but not the top prize
Though the hit music video won Best Overall Performance, Best Choreography, and Viewer’s Choice, it lost the Video of the Year prize to The Cars’ “You Might Think” — along with the aforementioned “Rockit,” “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” and “Every Breath You Take.”
Looking back on the upset, Sykes said, “It truly was a jury of [the artists’] peers. It didn’t have a lot to do with what we thought, or the fans thought. We were as surprised as anyone else when we saw the results come in.”
Quincy Jones got a Special Recognition Award (from a drunk Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood)
Jones, the record producer extraordinaire, received the 1984 VMAs’ Special Recognition Award. But Faces bandmates Stewart and Wood, the presenters of the award that night, were “so drunk, they couldn’t even read the teleprompter,” Sykes said. “It just turned into a fiasco. Here one of the great legends of the music world is getting an award, and they could barely stand up. Again, that helped define what this night would be, because it wasn’t a night of pleasantries.”
David Bowie, The Beatles, and Richard Lester won Video Vanguard Awards
Bowie and the Beatles are household names… but who is Richard Lester (pictured)? Well, he directed the Beatles’ films A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) two decades before the 1984 VMAs — then helmed the Man of Steel pics Superman II (1980) and Superman III (1983).
Madonna sang “Like a Virgin” and suffered a wardrobe malfunction
Emerging from a 17-foot tall wedding cake dressed in a wedding dress, a bustier, and a “boy toy” belt buckle, a lesser-known Madonna performed the then-unreleased single “Like a Virgin” at the awards show. And she certainly gained, ahem, exposure after losing her shoe mid-performance. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just pretend I meant to do this,’ and I dove on the floor and I rolled around,” she later recalled per Billboard. “And, as I reached for the shoe, the dress went up. And the underpants were showing.”
“Was it perfect? No, but it worked,” Madge’s manager Freddy DeMann told Billboard. Added former MTV programming exec Les Garland, “She stole the show.”
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