Kearns- Taylor Swift started off the 36^th annual VMA awards with a very political stance in her performance of “You need to calm down.” Swifts music video to the song promoted a petition for the Equality Act that currently has over 51,000 signatures on Change.org and is still collecting signatures. Swift publicly tweeted “We have a long way to go before everyone is truly treated equally” She has recently been contributing to the #Lettertomysenator hashtag on twitter.

Missy Elliott received her seventh MTV award; however, this is her first video vanguard award. Cardi B presented this award to Missy after her throwback song “get your freak on.” Missy Elliot is the first female rapper to receive this award

Lil Nas X received song of the year for “old town road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. This is Nas’ first award ever and he gave a big thanks to Cyrus for, has he put it, taking his career to “the next level.” Sadly, for Billy Ray Cyrus Old town road was excluded from country top charts.

Female performer and first time VMA attendee, H.E.R wore one of her five pet snakes to the VMA’s. The python was very friendly to reporters and was docile the whole night. Tana Mongeau, internet personality also wore a snake as part of her outfit claiming the snake was her “date” As a nod to her internet drama with Jake Paul. However, unlike H.E.R the snake was not Tana’s pet. She rented the snake from its owner only for the night a snake trainer was present all night with Tana. Both women were involved in a PETA tweet against H.E.R and Tana wearing the snakes as accessories. Both performers said the snake wearing wasn’t a direct homage to Britany Spears who also wore a snake during her VMA performance.