MTV Video of the Year Awards, 1984-2024

MTV: Videos of the Year, 1984-2024

Three years after the birth of music television with MTV, the network introduced its annual video awards. While multiple categories were established, this page recognizes just those songs which won for Video of the Year. Originally winners were determined by a panel of music video directors, producers, and record company executives, but viewers have voted on the winners since 2006. Check out other “songs of the year” lists here. 2024: Taylor Swift & Post Malone “Fortnight” 2023: Taylor Swift “Anti-Hero” 2022: Taylor Swift “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” 2021: Lil Nas X “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” 2020: The Weeknd “Blinding Lights” 2019: Taylor Swift “You Need to Calm Down” 2018: Camila Cabello with Young Thug “Havana” 2017: Kendrick Lamar “Humble” 2016: Beyoncé “Formation” 2015: Taylor Swift with Kendrick Lamar “Bad Blood” 2014: Miley Cyrus “Wrecking Ball” 2013: Justin Timberlake “Mirrors” 2012: Rihanna with Calvin Harris “We Found Love” 2011: Katy Perry “Firework” 2010: Lady Gaga “Bad Romance” 2009: Beyoncé “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” 2008: Britney Spears “Piece of Me” 2007: Rihanna with Jay-Z “Umbrella” 2006: Panic! At the Disco “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” 2005: Green Day “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” 2004: OutKast “Hey Ya!” 2003: Missy Elliott “Work It” 2002: Eminem “Without Me” 2001: Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lil’ Kim & Mya “Lady Marmalade” 2000: Eminem “The Real Slim Shady” 1999: Lauryn Hill “Doo Wop (That Thing)” 1998: Madonna “Ray of Light” 1997: Jamiroquai “Virtual Insanity” 1996: Smashing Pumpkins “Tonight Tonight” 1995: TLC “Waterfalls” 1994: Aerosmith “Cryin’” 1993: Pearl Jam “Jeremy” 1992: Van Halen “Right Now” 1991: R.E.M. “Losing My Religion” 1990: Sinéad O’Connor “Nothing Compares 2 U” 1989: Neil Young “This Note’s for You” 1988: INXS “Need You Tonight” / “Mediate” 1987: Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer” 1986: Dire Straits “Money for Nothing” 1985: Don Henley “The Boys of Summer” 1984: The Cars “You Might Think” Resources/Related Links: Dave’s Music Database: “‘Songs of the Year’ lists” MTV: Video Music Awards Wikipedia: MTV Video Music Award for Video o the Year First posted 1/28/2021; last updated 1/4/2025.

Kendrick Lamar hit #1 with “Humble”

Humble Kendrick Lamar

Writer(s): Kendrick Duckworth, Michael Williams II, Asheton Hogan (see lyrics here) Released: March 30, 2017 First Charted: April 22, 2017 Peak: 11 US, 11 RB, 6 UK, 2 CN, 2 AU (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 7.0 US, 1.2 UK, 9.82 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 968.60 video, 2141.79 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: “Humble,” the lead single from Kendrick Lamar’s fourth album, was his first #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as a lead artist. He’d previously hit #1 as a guest on Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood.” It debuted at #2, the highest starting point for a hip-hop song since Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” duet with Rihanna in 2010. Mike Will Made It created the “Lean and piano-laced trap beat for the strong-arming” AMG song with the intention of recording it with Gucci Mane. Lamar heard the beat and like it. Originally the song was going to appear on Mike’s Ransom 2, but Lamar’s team said he needed to keep it. Mike told him, “Bruh, you definitely should keep it, and you should use it as your single.” SF NPR’s Andrew Flanagan said the song shows how “the best rapper alive might explore the theme of God, religion, and personal growth.” WK Harriet Gibson wrote in The Guardian that “it is a showcase for his authoritative lyricism and preacher-like message.” WK Entertainment Weekly named it the best song of the year. WK The song won Grammys for Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, and Best Music Video and was nominated for Record of the Year. Most significantly, Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the album Damn, the first non-jazz or classical artist to win the award. The organizers describe the album as “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Kendrick Lamar AMG All Music Guide review of Damn. by Andy Kellman SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 2/9/2021; last updated 3/31/2024.

 

Kendrick Lamar released Damn.

Damn. Kendrick Lamar

Released: April 14, 2017 Peak: 14 US, 110 RB, 2 UK, 13 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.1 UK, 3.45 world (includes US and UK) Genre: rap

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Blood (5/6/17, 54 US, 31 RB, 56 UK, 41 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) DNA (5/6/17, 63 US, 3 RB, 18 UK, 3 CN, 16 AU, sales: 3 million US) Yah (5/6/17, 32 US, 18 RB, 45 UK, 27 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Element (5/6/17, 16 US, 9 RB, 33 UK, 16 CN, sales: 1.0 million US) Feel (5/6/17, 35 US, 21 RB, 46 UK, 30 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Loyalty (with Rihanna, 5/6/17, 14 US, 27 US, 12 CN, 20 AU, sales: 2.2 million worldwide) Pride (5/6/17, 37 US, 22 RB, 49 UK, 32 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Humble (3/30/17, 11 US, 11 RB, 6 UK, 2 CN, 2 AU, sales: 8.51 million worldwide) Lust (5/6/17, 42 US, 25 RB, 52 UK, 35 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Love (with Zacari, 5/6/17, 11 US, 1a5 RB, 39 UK, 22 CN, 29 AU, sales: 4.36 million worldwide) XXX (with U2, 5/6/17, 33 US, 50 UK, 36 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Fear (5/6/17, 50 US, 29 RB, 68 UK, 43 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) God (5/6/17, 58 US, 33 RB, 81 UK, 50 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Duckworth (5/6/17, 63 US, 36 RB, 80 UK, 52 CN, sales: 0.5 million US) Total Running Time: 54:54

Rating: 4.485 out of 5.00 (average of 11 ratings) Quotable: “The work of a supremely confident artist at the top of his game.” – Alex Petridis, The Guardian Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: Damn. “is less grandiose and novelistic than 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly but it’s still a Kendrick Lamar album, which means that it’s packed with lyrically dense meditations on death, God, fame, responsibility, and the African-American condition.” SL His fourth studio effort finds him “going for the jugular in the most aggressive, banger-based album of his career.” RS’20 If he “felt pressure to continue living up to his previous output,” AMG “there’s no evidence.” AMG “After being exalted on previous albums for his fearlessness and social conscience,” BB he told The New York Times that Damn. “wouldn’t pack its predecessor’s heavy political themes.” NME “Lamar gathers all the outward fury he summoned on To Pimp a Butterfly and bends it inward” AV for “an autobiographical work of epic proportions.” PF He takes “a more microscopic look at the everyday human experience” CS’19 as he traces “the spectrum of his mental states” AMG and examines “most of the seven deadly sins.” AMG “He plays tug-of-war between good and evil, illustrating how futile morality is when you grow up in a place like Compton, where racialized oppression and violence is commonplace.” PF He’d “touched on these themes in his earlier works” PF but here he “dove even deeper into his own head while expanding his sonic palette even further.” TM Lamar said, “It came out exactly how I heard it in my head,” he explained at the time. “It’s all pieces of me.” RS’20>/sup> This is “a snapshot of an artist at the peak of his powers.” TM “It contains some of Lamar’s best writing and performances, revealing his evolving complexity and versatility as a soul-baring lyricist and dynamic rapper.” AMG He “raps as though he doesn’t need oxygen” IT on “his most unabashed rap banger, rocking hard from start to finish.” RS’19 In Rolling Stone, Christopher R. Weingarten called it “a brilliant combination of the timeless and the modern, the old school and the next level.” WK Entertainment Weekly’s Eric Renner Brown said the album yieled some of Lamar’s “most emotionally resonant music yet.” WK and The Guardian’s Alex Petridis said “it sounds like the work of a supremely confident artist at the top of his game.” WK Slant said it is his “third consecutive masterpiece,” SL “at once accessible and demanding, a work of literary complexity with a mixtape-gritty presentation.” SL “Humble” “There’s relative concision in the track titles and material, and a greater emphasis on commercial sounds – such as Mike Will’s lean and piano-laced trap beat for the strong-arming Humble.” AMG Will originally developed the beat for Gucci Mane, but then he showed it to Lamar. Then it was going to be released on Will’s debut album, but Lamar was convinced to keep it for himself. WK The result was his first #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 as a lead artist. “DNA” That song and “the critic-aimed DNA” TM “are among his most club-ready bangers to date.” SL The latter finds Lamar “raving about ‘the feelin’ of an apocalypse happenin’.’” RS’20 on another song “with a beat Will had already prepared. Lamar rapped the second verse a cappella and asked Will to build the beat around the rap. Will did so, intending to make it “sound like he’s battling the beat.” WK “The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #4, making it Lamar’s second-highest charting song as a solo artist. “Love” / “Loyalty” Other official singles included Love and “the woozy Loyalty,” TM both of which were top 20 pop hits in the U.S. featuring guest turns by Zacari and Rihanna respectively. The latter, a top-10 hit which garnered 2 million sales, “fits right in with R&B radio while also expanding the genre’s thematic and emotional palate.” SL The former was a #1 R&B airplay hit, top-10 pop hit, and was certified by the RIAA for more than 4 million units. “Fear” / “Feel” Lamar’s “voice is at its most affecting in its many untreated forms. Take Fear, in which he switches between echoing hot-blooded parental threats to enumerating, with a 40-acre stare, various death scenarios.” AMG The song “showcases the Compton lyricist's biggest worries from ages 7, 17, and 27.” BB “On Feel, Kendrick is a wounded soul looking for reassurance from his loved ones.” BB “As Lamar's paintbrush casts countless different emotional hues over DAMN.'s canvas, he articulates his wins and losses thrillingly.” BB “Duckworth” “His storytelling hits an astonishing new high on Duckworth, the album’s finale. Over ethereal funk sewn by 9th Wonder, Lamar details a potentially tragic encounter between his father and future Top Dawg CEO Anthony Tiffith – and the conditions leading to it.” AMG “Kendrick frames the story as proof of his ‘chosen one’ status, a fateful sign that he’d go on to become the greatest rapper in the world. Whether or not you believe in divine intervention, it’s hard to argue that he didn’t fulfill that prophecy.” PF It earned Lamar a Grammy for Best Rap Album and a nomination for Album of the Year. It was named album of the year by several publications, including Billboard, Q magazine, Rolling Stone, and Spin. Even more impressive, though, is that it won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first non-jazz or classical work to score such an honor. WK “The committee said the album had ‘vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism’ that captured ‘the complexity of modern African American life.’” ST

Resources and Related Links: AMG All Music Guide AV The A.V. Club (11/20/2019). “The 50 Best Albums of the 2010s” BB Billboard (11/19/2019). “The 100 Greatest Albums of the 2010s” CS’19 Consequence of Sound (12/29/2019). “The Top 100 Albums of the 2010s” IT The Independent (11/10/2020). “The 50 Best Albums of the Last Decade” NME New Musical Express (NME) (11/29/2019). “The Best Albums of the Decade: The 2010s” PF Pitchfork.com (10/8/2019). “The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s” RS’19 Rolling Stone (12/3/2019). “The 100 Best Albums of the 2010s” RS’20 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” SL Slant (12/20/2019). “The 100 Best Albums of the 2010s” ST Stacker.com (10/30/2020). “100 Best Albums of the 21st Century, According to Critics” TM Time (11/19/2019). “The 10 Best Albums of the 2010s” by Maura Johnston WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/2/2019; last updated 4/23/2022.