Remembering the First MTV VMAs, 40 Years Later — Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd Hosted, Madonna’s Performance

A “self-promotional orgy,” an “incestuous affair … ranking right up there with your average yawn,” “little more than splashy self-aggrandizement,” and “a dismaying exhibition of amateurism, egomania, and Neanderthal incoherence.”

That’s what critics had to say about the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards when it aired 40 years ago, on September 14, 1984. And yet that first iteration of the VMAs dominated headlines as an awards show more in touch with Gen X than others at the time.

“We saw an opening for a counterculture awards show that would not follow the rules of the traditional ceremonies people were used to seeing,” former MTV promotions director John Sykes told Uproxx in 2015. “We tried to be the counterculture show because that’s what the network was, that’s what we were trying to be.”

Though its cultural cachet has waned recently, the MTV VMAs were must-see TV for decades, and it’s all thanks to the popularity of that 1984 show. Here’s what went down on this day 40 years ago.