When Epic Records initially rejected “Jeremy” as a potential single off Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, Eddie Vedder and company took matters into their own hands and had Vedder’s friend, photographer Chris Cuffaro, do his own version, which Cuffaro financed himself. Unfortunately for Cuffaro, that’s not the “Jeremy” video that won four Moonmen at the ‘93 VMAs. Instead it was this later one, depicting a bullied child who eventually commits suicide, that got all the glory. While it wasn’t exactly a feelgood video, “Jeremy” truly connected with the disenfranchised Generation X of the ’90s. But the Cuffaro’s simpler version exists on YouTube, if you care to see what might have been.

1994: Aerosmith, “Cryin’”

This video did even more for Alicia Silverstone’s career than it did for Aerosmith’s. After director Marty Callner spotted Silverstone in The Crush and cast her in a trilogy of ‘Smith vids — this one, “Amazing,” and “Crazy” — Silverstone caught the attention ofClueless director Amy Heckerling. And the rest was history. (Side note: Much like the late, great Nathaniel Hornblower, we still think the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” totally got robbed this year.)

1995: TLC, “Waterfalls”

1995 was another good year for music video: Michael and Janet Jackson’s astounding, Mark Romanek-directed “Scream” and Weezer’s Happy Days homage “Buddy Holly” by Spike Jonze were also nominated that year. The director of this video, which won four VMAs, did all right for himself: F. Gary Gray’s most recent work was the box office smash Straight Outta Compton.

1996: Smashing Pumpkins, “Tonight, Tonight”

Titanic almost caused this video to sink: “Tonight, Tonight” directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris had trouble finding period costumes in the L.A. area for this production (which was inspired by an entirely different movie, Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon), because Titanic director James Cameron had rented them all. Thankfully, Dayton and Faris were able to find and/or doctor enough costumes to make it work, as Tim Gunn might say… and eventually at the VMAs, “Tonight, Tonight” was king of the world! Incidentally, Dayton and Faris got their own Oscar glory a decade later, with their film Little Miss Sunshine.

1997: Jamiroquai, “Virtual Insanity”       

It may look like singer Jay Kay is boogie-ing on a giant conveyor belt in this video, which scored 10 VMA nominations and four wins, but it was all a very clever illusion created by director Jonathan Glazer utilizing moving walls. Jamiroquai recreated the dizzying effect with an actual moving floor for their insanely cool performance at the 1997 VMAs.

1998: Madonna, “Ray of Light”

Madonna holds the record with the most VMA wins (21), and five of those Moonmen are for this warp-speed clip lensed by Jonas Akerlund. Akerlund went on to direct six other videos for Madge: “Music,” “American Life,” “Jump,” “Celebration,” “Ghosttown,” and “Bitch I’m Madonna.” Akerlund is also the guy who brought us another “Bitch” video: the Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up,” which came out on Madonna’s Maverick Records label.

1999: Lauryn Hill, “Doo Wop (That Thing)”

1999 was a good year for Ms. Hill: Along with her four VMA wins, she also won five Grammys (including Album of the Year and Best New Artist). She never replicated that success, but she returned to the MTV airwaves three years later with her polarizing and unhinged MTV Unplugged special. That won no awards.

2000: Eminem, “The Real Slim Shady”   

While “The Real Slim Shady,” which was co-directed by Eminem’s mentor Dr. Dre, wasn’t banned from MTV like “This Note’s for You” was, it probably wasn’t a favorite among many MTV regulars — including Total Request Live host Carson Daly, one of many public figures lampooned in the video and song. Tommy Lee, Will Smith, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Fred Durst, and *NSYNC were all targets of Shady’s scorn as well.

2001: Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mýa & Pink (feat. Missy Elliott)    

VMA viewers could have been forgiven for mistaking this clip for a Twister Sister video, thanks to Christina’s Dee Snider-like frightwig of blonde corkscrew curls. Xtina rocked the totally twisted look at various awards shows that year, including the Blockbuster Awards and MTV Movie Awards, despite many dismayed fashion critics’ cries of “We’re not gonna take it!”

2002: Eminem, “Without Me”

Shady continued to piss off his peers two years after his first VMA victory, sparring at the awards with techno star Moby (“I will hit a man with glasses,” he said in one classy acceptance speech) and foul-mouthed Conan puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. An award for me to poop on, indeed.

2003: Missy Elliott, “Work It”

Madonna and Britney stole poor Missy’s thunder, but this Dave Meyers-directed epic featuring cameos by Timbaland, Eve, Mr. Wiggles from the Rock Steady Crew, and a bunch of live bumblebees deserves its due. Fun fact: According to an MTV interview with Meyers, Missy got totally drunk on the set, when he forgot to replace the wine in her glass with water during multiple takes of the restaurant scene.

2004: Outkast, “Hey Ya!”     

MTV decided that this Ed Sullivan spoof starring eight Andre 3000s was definitely cooler than being cool: It won four VMAs in 2003. Director Bryan Barber told MTV that playing the multiple roles of the Love Below band members Benjamin Andre (keys), Possum Jenkins (bass), vocalist Ice Cold 3000 (vocals), Dookie Blasingame (drums), and Johnny Vulture (guitar) really wore Andre out during the 23 takes it took to get this video right. But clearly it was all worth it.

2005: Green Day, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”     

“What a beautiful wedding,” indeed. This circus-themed ceremony, starring the Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, was a great start to Panic!’s MTV career; it was, incredibly, the first video the band ever made. Even more incredibly, band members Brendon Urie and Ryan Ross had the flu while making it.

2007: Rihanna, “Umbrella”

This song was originally penned with another MTV darling, Britney Spears, in mind. Well, Brit Brit’s loss was definitely RiRi’s gain, as this became the Barbados singer’s big breakthrough hit and a quintuple VMA nominee. However, we do think Britney totally could have rocked the silver bodypaint, custom-mixed by makeup guru Pamela Neal, that Rihanna wore in this memorable shoot.

2008: Britney Spears, “Piece of Me”

2007 was a very bad year for Britney at the VMAs. Following her public meltdown that included a bizarre head-shaving incident and an umbrella attack, she was somehow forced by handlers, who clearly didn’t have her best interests at heart, back onto the VMAs stage — even though it was obvious that she was not ready for prime time. Her show-opening “Gimme More” performance was a critically panned, potentially career-killing disaster. The brass at MTV got their watercooler moment, but they must have feltsome guilt over the whole thing, because the following year, they invited Britney back and lavished her with three Moonmen for “Piece of Me,” arguably one of the worstvideos of her career.

2009: Beyoncé, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” 

This was the crazy year when Kanye West, angered that Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” had won for Best Female Video over “Single Ladies,” bumrushed Taylor’s speech. But people forget that Bey actually took home the top honor that year — beating out Kanye’s own “Love Lockdown” in the process.

2010: Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”     

The basic plot of this bathhouse tour de force, directed by Francis Lawrence of Hunger Games fame, was Gaga — in a faux polar bear-fur jacket, razorblade sunglasses, and 12-inch Alexander McQueen platform shoes — getting kidnapped by a gang of supermodels who drug her and sell her to the Russian mafia. Typical Gaga, then. She’s made 25 dazzling music videos during her career, but “Bad Romance” is still the one by which all of Gaga’s other videos must be judged.

2011: Katy Perry, “Firework”    

Katy isn’t all about whipped-cream bras, teenage dreams, and blue wigs, you know. She has a serious side, too. This heartstring-plucking video, dedicated to the It Gets Better Project, was also a nominee for Best Video With a Message, a new category introduced in 2011, along with Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie,” Pink’s “Perfect, “Rise Against’s “Make It Stop,” and Taylor Swift’s “Mean.” However, “Firework” ultimately lost out in that race to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”

2012: Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris, “We Found Love”      

This is possibly the best illustration of the old “art imitating life” cliché in VMAs history. When the video was released in October 2011, the similarities to Rihanna’s real-life drama with on/off boyfriend Chris Brown were impossible not to notice. Her co-star, Brown lookalike Dudley O’Shaughnessy, bleached his hair blond for the shoot, and he and RiRi even reenacted a portion of police report account of her 2009 car fight with Brown. Yet despite all of its sensationalism and exploitation of their personal lives, “We Found Love” humanized Rihanna and Brown, in a way. It remains one the VMAs’ finest champs.

2013: Justin Timberlake, “Mirrors”

Who doesn’t love this eight-minute epic celebrating the decades-spanning love story of JT’s beloved maternal grandparents, William and Sadie Bomar? The Floria Sigismondi-directed, extremely haunting clip warrants multiple viewings, preferably with a box of extra-ply tissues at the ready. The real-life William died in December 2012 after a long battle with heart trouble and dementia; one scene in the “Mirrors” video, when the fictional Sadie’s wedding ring falls off and her grandson deftly catches it, hints at Justin’s intention to carry on the Bomars’ legacy and enjoy a union with his own bride, Jessica Biel, that’s as successful as the one his grandparents shared for 63 years. Sob.

2014: Miley Cyrus, “Wrecking Ball” 

We think the 2015 VMAs host’s pool-party twerkfest “We Can’t Stop” was the real jam, but MTV honored this hammer-licking tighty-whiteys spectacle instead. (By the way, this is the video that spurred Miley’s above-mentioned online feud with Sinéad O’Connor.) Anyway, Miley, who’d caused such a fuss twerking up on Robin Thicke at the previous year’s VMAs, attempted to clean up her act and make a social statement by dispatching a homeless youth, Jesse Helt, to accept the award on her behalf. But she still couldn’t avoid controversy, when it was later revealed that Helt had a criminal past; his TV appearance prompted police to send out a warrant for his arrest for probation violation, and he was eventually sentenced to six months in jail.

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