Madonna Kisses Britney Spears at the VMAs

When former MTV president Van Toffler invited Madonna to the 2003 Video Music Awards, he knew she would carry the occasion. What he did not know was simply how far she’d take it.

“I don’t have to encourage Madonna to go over the top,” he advised Rolling Stone in 2023. “That’s in her DNA.”

Madonna was given just about full freedom to carry out as she wished. She initially selected Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez to come onstage together with her, however Lopez was compelled to drop out as a result of she was taking pictures the film Shall We Dance? Christina Aguilera was tapped to take her place. MTV was greater than OK with this: Spears and Aguilera have been two of the largest pop stars in the world at the time, and to have them onstage with the queen of the style was positive to be successful.

Rehearsals befell at Radio City Music Hall a couple of weeks earlier than the present and have been locked down tightly; Madonna wished few individuals to know what was happening, and Spears and Aguilera have been inspired to observe her lead. “Madonna kept making them do things over, and they were totally listening to her,” Summer Strauch, a producer and photographer who labored on the VMAs, advised Rolling Stone.

When the present rolled round on Aug. 28, 2003, it was a shock to most when Madonna kissed Spears on the mouth and adopted that by kissing Aguilera throughout her efficiency of “Hollywood,” which opened the broadcast. It was one in every of the most scandalous strikes seen on TV throughout the first a part of the ’00s.

Watch Madonna Kiss Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 VMAs

Only a handful of MTV executives knew the kiss was coming. One of the first response pictures — which minimize away from Madonna’s Aguilera smooch — was of an upset-looking Justin Timberlake, whom Spears had dated for a time. Celebrity reactions – some thrilled, some much less so – adopted by Beyonce, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Lindsey Lohan and many extra.

But not everybody authorised. The New York Post referred to as it a “raunchy, bump-and-grind dance routine that ended in explicit, open-mouth kisses. “The world remains to be speaking about it,” Oprah Winfrey noted when Madonna appeared on Oprah a few weeks later. “I had no concept that it was going to trigger the ruckus that it triggered,” Madonna said.

This wasn’t the first time Madonna caused a stir at the VMAs. In 1984, during the first VMAs, she sang “Like a Virgin” and her shoes fell off. She went to grab them, exposing the underside of her dress. Madonna rolled with the wardrobe malfunction, but many at the time were convinced it was a fatal mishap. She later recalled that when she came offstage, her manager said her “profession was over with.”

Instead, Madonna became one of the biggest stars of the era. Her 2003 VMA kiss didn’t slow her, or MTV, down. “It’s just par for the course,” Toffler said in 2023. “The older demographic wasn’t ready for it.”