The MTV Video Music Awards announced their nominations on July 23, and now we’ve opened our predictions center so you can bet on the winners in all 20 categories from Video of the Year to Best Visual Effects. Who do you think will take top honors? Register here if you haven’t already, and give us your picks here. Your predictions are all pooled together to generate our official racetrack odds.
In most categories, the VMAs are decided by fans voting online, so a passionate fan base is key, but that also makes awards like these even harder to anticipate. Figuring out which artists will have the most mobilized supporters is tricky because it can change from year to year as pop culture fandom waxes and wanes. And in the race for Video of the Year, MTV picked multiple artists with armies of diehard stans.
Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift lead the way with 10 total nominations apiece, and they’re up for Video of the Year for “Thank U, Next” and “You Need to Calm Down,” respectively. Swift has won the top category before (for “Bad Blood” in 2015), and while Grande lost her nomination in the top race for “No Tears Left to Cry” last year, she did take Best Pop Video. And both women have won American Music Awards for Artist of the Year in recent years, which is meaningful because that’s also decided by fans voting online.
Meanwhile, Jonas Brothers are nominated for “Sucker.” They’ve never won at the VMAs, but they’ve only been nominated twice before. They’re also American Music Award winners (Breakthrough Artist, 2008), but that was more than a decade ago. It remains to be seen if their fan base is just as strong as it used to be — but maybe it’s even stronger since “Sucker” became the first number-one single of their careers.
Then there’s “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. Both have unproven fan bases at the VMAs, but the song has shattered streaming records and topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a record-tying 16 weeks as of this writing. Teenage newcomer Billie Eilish (“Bad Guy”) is also an unknown quantity at these awards, but her debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” has been hovering near the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart since its release back in March, so there’s no question that she’s popular.
Rounding out the Video of the Year race is “A Lot” by 21 Savage featuring J. Cole. The release of his video in February was quickly followed by the British-born rapper’s arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and it was suggested that he was targeted due to the song’s criticism of family separations at the US-Mexico border. That could inspire voters to rally around him.
But even if you think you’ve figured out the Video of the Year race, there are still 19 other categories to forecast. Do you think you know who will win all those too? Take your best shot here, and you can keep editing your predictions until awards are handed out on August 26.
Be sure to make your MTV Video Music Award predictions so that music executives and top name stars can see how they’re faring in our odds. Don’t be afraid to jump in now since you can keep changing your predictions until winners are announced on August 26. And join in the fierce debate over the 2019 VMAs taking place right now with Hollywood insiders in our music forums. Read more Gold Derby entertainment news.
