When former MTV president Van Toffler invited Madonna to the 2003 Video Music Awards, he knew she would deliver the get together. What he did not know was simply how far she’d take it.
“I don’t should encourage Madonna to go excessive,” he advised Rolling Stone in 2023. “That is in her DNA.”
Madonna was given just about full freedom to carry out as she wished. She initially selected Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez to come onstage together with her, however Lopez was pressured to drop out as a result of she was capturing the film Shall We Dance? Christina Aguilera was tapped to take her place. MTV was greater than OK with this: Spears and Aguilera had been two of the most important pop stars on this planet on the time, and to have them onstage with the queen of the style was certain to be a success.
Rehearsals befell at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor just a few weeks earlier than the present and had been locked down tightly; Madonna wished few folks to know what was happening, and Spears and Aguilera had been inspired to comply with her lead. “Madonna saved making them do issues over, they usually had been completely listening to her,” Summer season Strauch, a producer and photographer who labored on the VMAs, advised Rolling Stone.
When the present rolled round on Aug. 28, 2003, it was a shock to most when Madonna kissed Spears on the mouth and adopted that by kissing Aguilera throughout her efficiency of “Hollywood,” which opened the printed. It was one of the scandalous strikes seen on TV in the course of the first a part of the ’00s.
Watch Madonna Kiss Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera on the 2003 VMAs
Solely a handful of MTV executives knew the kiss was coming. One of many first response photographs — which reduce away from Madonna’s Aguilera smooch — was of an upset-looking Justin Timberlake, whom Spears had dated for a time. Superstar reactions – some thrilled, some much less so – adopted by Beyonce, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Lindsey Lohan and many extra.
However not everybody accepted. The New York Publish known as it a “raunchy, bump-and-grind dance routine that led to specific, open-mouth kisses. “The world remains to be speaking about it,” Oprah Winfrey famous when Madonna appeared on Oprah just a few weeks later. “I had no concept that it was going to trigger the ruckus that it induced,” Madonna mentioned.
This wasn’t the primary time Madonna induced a stir on the VMAs. In 1984, in the course of the first VMAs, she sang “Like a Virgin” and her sneakers fell off. She went to seize them, exposing the underside of her gown. Madonna rolled with the wardrobe malfunction, however many on the time had been satisfied it was a deadly mishap. She later recalled that when she got here offstage, her supervisor mentioned her “profession was over with.”
As a substitute, Madonna grew to become one of many greatest stars of the period. Her 2003 VMA kiss did not gradual her, or MTV, down. “It is simply par for the course,” Toffler mentioned in 2023. “The older demographic wasn’t prepared for it.”
Madonna Albums Ranked
As one of the fearless artists of the trendy period, she’s by no means turned away from controversy or large songs.
