Lady Gaga wins eight ‘moonmen’ at MTV VMAs

Lady Gaga dominated the MTV video music awards on Sunday night, with the flamboyant performer winning eight awards and going through as many outfit changes. Gaga, who led the field with 13 nominations, took the coveted 'video of the year' award for her single Bad Romance.
 
The 24-year-old, real name Stefani Germanotta, also picked up MTV Moonmen statuettes for best pop video, best female video, best editing, best directing, best dance video and best choreography. Lady Gaga shared her eighth award, best collaboration video, with Beyonce - for their controversial lesbian prison promo, Telephone.
 
The eight awards makes Gaga the second most honoured act on a single night (along with Norwegian pop band A-ha, the big winners of 1986, who also won eight). Britain's Peter Gabriel still holds the record, after picking up nine gongs in 1987 for his groundbreaking video Sledgehammer.
 
Gaga matched her many awards with a different - and increasingly more bizarre - ensemble each time she took to the stage. Her outre outfits included a black Victorian-inspired gown (designed by the late Alexander McQueen), a spiked leather corset and a dress and hat which looked like they were fashioned out of meat – not unlike her recent cover for Vogue Japan.
 
Other performers to win awards included Eminem, who took best male video and best hip-hop video for his single Not Afraid, and 16-year-old Justin Bieber, who was named best new artist.
 
Only two British acts took awards this year. They were Florence and the Machine (best art direction for the Dog Days Are Over video) and Muse (best special effect for Uprising).
 
Guests at the MTV awards were keen to see how Kanye West and Taylor Swift - both performing at the ceremony - would react after their run-in last year. In 2009 West interupted Swift's acceptance speech, saying her trophy for best female video should have gone to Beyonce.
 
Although the two artists did not meet on stage this year, both performed songs which hinted at the incident. West - who was booed by some audience members - acknowledged his past boorish behaviour in a new song, Runaway. Swift's song Innocent contains the lyrics: "Thirty-two and still growing up now; who you are is not what you did. You're still an innocent." ·