2024 VMA Rock Noms Are For the Dads

The MTV Video Music Awards announced their 2024 nominations, and the VMA rock noms are very Dad-coded. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

The "Best Rock" nominees are:

Bon Jovi - "Legendary"
Coldplay - "feelslikeimfallinginlove"
Green Day - "Dilemma"
Kings of Leon - "Mustang"
Lenny Kravitz - "Human"
U2 - "Atomic City"

Again, there's nothing wrong at all with these nominees, but it is rather surprising that MTV is recognizing such seasoned acts, especially since it's been years since some of these bands have received a VMA nomination. U2, for example, was last nominated in 2009. Oddly enough, it was for the category "Best Video (That Should Have Won a Moonman)," which was seemingly created to honor iconic videos of the past. (If you care at all, U2 was nominated in that category for "Where the Streets Have No Name," but they lost out to the classic "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys.)

Even though Coldplay, Green Day, Kings of Leon and Lenny Kravitz could easily fall under the "Dad Rock" moniker, each of those acts has nabbed at least one or more nominations within the past five years. Coldplay's last VMA nomination was in 2022 for "Best Visual Effects" for "My Universe," which featured K-pop giants BTS. However, they lost to Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow's "Industry Baby."

Green Day's last VMA nomination came in 2020 in the "Best Rock" category for "Oh Yeah!" They ended up losing to Coldplay's "Orphans," so good for Coldplay!)

Kings of Leon and Kravitz both received their last VMA nomination in 2021 in the "Best Rock" category for "The Bandit" and "Raise Vibration," respectively, but they both lost to John Mayer's "Last Train Home."

Perhaps the most shocking nomination in the "Best Rock" category is for Bon Jovi. The last VMA honor the band won was the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 1991. (Shocking, right?!) They didn't even get a nomination for "It's My Life," which was and is a great song and video, but in 2000-01, the world was still all up in boy bands and nu metal, so the oversight sort of makes sense.

Before that, they were nominated for three VMAs in 1987. They won one VMA from that ceremony for "Best Stage Performance in a Video" for "Livin' on a Prayer," which still holds up today.

While it's highly unlikely "Best Rock" will be presented during the broadcast, the 2024 MTV VMAs are taking place on Tuesday, September 10. Fans can vote for who they think should win at MTV.com.

Bon Jovi has been active for over four decades, and they aren't showing signs of slowing down.

Their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career has netted them over 130 million albums sold worldwide and legions of fans spanning generations.

Narrowing down their catalog to a select number of songs and ranking them is a daunting task, but here are Bon Jovi's 35 best songs, ranked.

A new docuseries about Bon Jovi is set to premiere on Hulu on April 26. The docuseries is titled Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story.

The docuseries also has the cooperation of all Bon Jovi members, both past and present. A teaser trailer of the docuseries offers a supercut of the band's wild career, including the exit of guitarist Richie Sambora.

Additionally, the teaser trailer shows Jon Bon Jovi in a hospital bed. He's holding a dry-erase board that simply says, "I'm good." Meanwhile, an unidentified voiceover says, "Jon's going through his challenges." It then cuts to JBJ saying, "It almost killed us."

The "challenges" appear to be about Bon Jovi's recent vocal issues, which he discussed during the Pollstar Live! conference in February 2024.

Per Ultimate Classic Rock, Bon Jovi said, "It's become public knowledge now, but I've had major reconstructive surgery in my vocal cords, and I never had anything like this, ever. So it's been a difficult road, but I found a doctor in Philadelphia who did something called a medialization, because one of my cords was literally atrophied."

A description of Thank You, Goodnight from Hulu also promises it will delve into the band's "most public moments of friction." Of course, this is likely a reference to the 2013 exit of Sambora, who has often talked about the potential of rejoining the band.