MTV has announced that they’ve ditched gendered categories at the Video Music Awards for the first time in their 34-year run.
In past ceremonies, Best Male Video and Best Female Video have both been a prevalent part of the proceedings.
However, after this year’s nominations were announced on Tuesday (25 July) night, both of these had been ditched, and replaced by Artist Of The Year.
Up for the Artist Of The Year category - voted for by the public - are Bruno Mars, Lorde, Ed Sheeran and The Weeknd.
Also competing to be voted Artist Of The Year are Ariana Grande, who gets our personal seal of approval, after her prominent involvement in the One Love Manchester benefit, and Kendrick Lamar, who leads this year’s nominees with eight nods.
As well as his Artist Of The Year nomination, Kendrick’s elaborate ‘HUMBLE.’ video has been honoured in the Best Hip Hop Video, Best Cinematography, Best Direction, Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects and Best Choreography categories.
‘HUMBLE.’ is also a contender for the coveted Video Of The Year, alongside Bruno Mars’ ‘24K Magic’, Alessia Cara’s ‘Scars To Your Beautiful’, DJ Khaled’s ‘Wild Thoughts’ and The Weeknd’s ‘Reminder’.
Check out the full list of nominees on the official VMAs website.
The news that MTV has ditched gendered categories at the VMAs comes after the MTV Movies Awards made a similar move, replacing them with a nonspecific Best Performance category in 2017.
This year’s VMAs will be held at the Forum in California on Sunday 27 August.
Beyoncé was the big winner at last year’s awards, thanks to the offerings from her ‘Lemonade’ visual album, while Rihanna bagged the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, while this year’s recipient is yet to be revealed.