With the official list of nominees released earlier this week, punters are racing to the betting lines to put their money behind their favorites in this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.
In an article published on MTV’s website, there are five nominations for 2015’s Video of the Year. The nominations include Beyoncé for ‘7-11’, Ed Sheeran’s hit single ‘Thinking Out Loud’, Taylor Swift’s star-studded ‘Bad Blood’ that features co-nominee Kendrick Lamar, the catchy ‘Uptown Funk’ from Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, and Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’. The nominations were announced on Apple’s Beats 1 radio show last Monday.
Though the VMA’s are still too far away, it seems that punters have already picked their favorites this early on. According to the betting odds from Betfair and Paddy Power, punters are putting their money behind Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar to snag a Moonman by the end of the night for Video of the Year. Betfair has placed the two music videos on the top spot with odds of 5/4. Queen B’s ‘7-11’ garners the third spot with Betfair with odds of 9/2, ‘Uptown Funk’ is in fourth place with 11/2, while ‘Thinking Out Loud’ is in last place.
Meanwhile, Paddy Power’s betting lines tell a different story. In an article published by Bet Special yesterday, the bookmaker has placed Beyoncé’s ‘7-11’ in the last spot with odds of 12/1. ‘Alright’ has a lower odd of winning according to Paddy Power with 7/1, while the British pop singer’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’ is at third place with 11/4. Ronson is the runner up at 2/1 while Swift’s ‘Bad Blood’ is the forerunner for the award with odds of 6/4.
The announcement of this year’s nominees has caused a Twitter war between a nominee and a fellow artist, causing a commotion on the internet for the past few days. In an article published by Vox dated 22nd July 2015, the ‘Bad Blood’ singer reacted to a tweet from acclaimed pop star Nicki Minaj, who unfortunately did not make the list of nominees for Video of the Year. Minaj reportedly reacted to the VMA’s roster of nominations, where she discussed through her tweets that white culture has appropriated and homogenized black culture to make it popular. The ‘Anaconda’ singer’s tweets were clearly directed to criticized MTV and the Video Music Awards for propagating such a culture.
Unfortunately, Swift clearly missed the point of Minaj’s tweets, felt maligned, and responded with a tweet of her own. The ‘Bad Blood’ singer replied to Minaj’s tweet, saying that she has done nothing but to love and support her and it was very unlike Minaj to pit women against each other. Swift said that maybe one of the male artists took her slot for the nomination. After getting replies from Minaj, telling her that she clearly misunderstood the tweet’s message, Swift’s last tweet on the subject was inviting Minaj to come up on stage if ever she wins the award for Video of the Year. This Twitter war caused quite a stir on social media and the rest of the internet, even from fellow celebrities like Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, and Kim Kardashian. Fellow artist Katy Perry even gave her two cents about it, saying that she finds it quite ironic that Swift uses the argument about pitting women against other women when she herself capitalizes on it. This seems to be a reference to the existing feud between Perry and Swift.
But now, all the drama between Swift and Minaj is finally over. In an article published by the New York Daily News, the ‘Anaconda’ singer quickly accepted Swift’s apology over social media. The next day, Minaj called up Swift and she told news sources that they spoke for a very long time, even cracking up over the phone. The rapper told Us Magazine that Swift apologized to her again and admitted the mistake that she wasn’t able to understand the bigger picture of what Minaj was saying on Twitter. Aside from discussing the end of the feud, the ‘Feeling Myself’ artists said that she still takes offense of her not being included in the list of nominees. She adamantly believes that the music industry and other artists should build each other up and appreciate their differences.
No one knows for certain if the rest of the world would agree with what the bookmakers’ betting lines are saying. We will just have to wait and see who gets the Moonman when the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards airs on 30th August at 9pm ET/PT in the United States. This highly anticipated event will be hosted by Miley Cyrus.