Mariah Carey was slated to steal the show at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, and while she received the network’s coveted Video Vanguard Award, the R&B songstress performed a medley of her greatest hits beforehand — to rather mixed reactions on social media.
“Why doesn’t Mariah Carey’s body move when she performs?” asked one of many users on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with another person commenting: “mariah carey on that stage giving us absolutely nothing IM CRYING.”
The Video Vanguard Award is MTV’s highest honor and is given out only to artists who’ve had a profound impact on music video and popular culture. Fellow pop diva Ariana Grande introduced Carey as its latest winner Sunday, leading to a polarizing performance.
Carey, who seemed to be lip-syncing for at least part of her time onstage, certainly appeared to give the crowd what they wanted — and performed bits of some of her most famous songs, “Sugar Sweet,” “Fantasy,” “Heartbreaker,” and finally, “We Belong Together.”
Critics couldn’t help but feel that those songs didn’t belong to that performance, however.
