2003 clip of Britney kissing Madonna at VMAs goes viral: ‘Today’s gays don’t understand’
Everyone was gagged by the kiss: a truly historic moment that the young gays don’t quite understand the significance of (Getty)
Before we had the pop power trio that was Ariana Grande, Jessie J and Nicki Minaj, we had Britney, Madonna and Christina Aguilera dominating the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).
A resurfaced clip of the trio performing Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” at the 2003 VMAs has gone viral on X/Twitter, racking up more than 10 million views. It was posted with the caption: “Today’s gays don’t understand the historical relevance of this sequence.”
The three stars were then joined on stage by rapper Missy Elliott and launched into her hit “Work It.”
“This would be as if Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo would join Beyoncé on stage for a lesbian kiss, followed by Meghan as the best man,” the post continued. “Do you understand young gays?”
The clip was part of former MTV president Van Toffler’s desire to honour the VMAs legacy, with a nod to the 1984 show, when Madonna performed the worldwide chart-topper at the first awards show, ultimately leading to the performance in 2003.
Back then, the smooch was seen as “scandalous”, according to Rolling Stone magazine. Even in 2003, the New York Post described the performance as a “raunchy, bump-and-grind dance routine that ended in explicit, open-mouth kisses”.
Madonna later said that she “had no idea that it was going to cause the ruckus that it caused” and MTV received hate mail from an “older demographic” who were disturbed by the performance.
Even Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac fame, wasn’t happy about it. She told an Australian newspaper in 2003: “First of all, Madonna is too old to be kissing someone who is 22. And Britney should be smarter than that. Hopefully, she will figure a way out of this hole she has dug for herself. I thought it was the most obnoxious moment in television history.”
Although everyone seemingly remembers only Britney’s and Madonna kissing, the latter also locked lips with Aguilera but that wasn’t shown because the producers decided to cut away to show live reaction shots from the audience. In particular, the camera focused on Britney’s ex Justin Timberlake.
The pair went through a high-profile split in 2002, with the former NSYNC boy-band member using a Britney lookalike in his “Cry Me A River” music video.
The footage from the 2003 VMAs showed Timberlake looking very disapproving. The decision to cut away from Aguilera wasn’t intentional, according to Toffler, who said that “you have to make choices in a live show”.
But Aguilera commented on the decision in 2018, saying: “It was a cheap shot. I saw the newspaper the next day and was like: ‘Oh, well, I guess I got left out of that one’.”
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