
The nominations for the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards have just been announced and, surprise-surprise, it looks like a two-horse race between Adele and the Queen Bee herself, Beyoncé (who racked up a jaw-dropping 11 nominations for Lemonade). There’s little doubt that these two influential artists wholly deserved their thumbs-up from the Starbucks of pop-culture television, but, given MTV’s emphasis on popular appeal, we figured there were just as many deserving artists who might have been overlooked for their chance to join the heralding ranks of MTV VMA nominees. The past year has yielded some impressive, and out-of-fuck-knows-where video releases, and below is a list of the artists we believe unfairly got the short-straw of “popular credibility” in their respective fields.
- Words: Vincent Dwyer