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Taylor Swift Wins Most Prizes at MTV Europe Music Awards

Taylor Swift. (Getty Images)
Taylor Swift. (Getty Images)
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Taylor Swift Wins Most Prizes at MTV Europe Music Awards

Taylor Swift. (Getty Images)
Taylor Swift. (Getty Images)

Taylor Swift walked away with four prizes at MTV's Europe Music Awards on Sunday, including best video for her 10-minute "All Too Well".

Double-award winners included Nicki Minaj for best song and best hip-hop, and the French DJ and record producer David Guetta won the best electronic award and best collaboration, Reuters said.

The event, broadcast on MTV from Duesseldorf in western Germany, honored musicians from Brazil to South Korea.

It featured an appearance by Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra, the winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest, which performed "Stefania" in an arena glowing with Ukraine's national colors of blue and yellow.

The US pop singer Swift, wearing a dress of bejewelled mesh, won best artist, best pop, best video and best long form video.

"I felt like I learned so much about how making film can be a natural extension of my storytelling," Swift said as she accepted the long form video award.

In "All Too Well", Swift draws inspiration from 1970s Hollywood and recounts a fraying romantic relationship that disintegrates, leaving behind only a scarf and memories.

"It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well", Swift sings.

Minaj's winning song "Super Freaky Girl" incorporates the 1981 hit "Super Freak" with lyrics "I can lick it, I can ride it while you slippin' and slidin'".

British pop star Harry Styles won in the "best live" category and the Thai-born Lalisa 'Lisa' Manoban won best K-pop.

South Korea's BTS, the global K-pop sensation, won the biggest fans category. The hosts for the show were British pop star Rita Ora and the film director Taika Waititi, who married this year. Ora herself won for "best look".

Duesseldorf has a musical heritage as home to the pioneering German electronic band Kraftwerk, which influenced generations of pop and dance musicians with mesmerizing tracks such as "Autobahn".

The city also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011. Screaming teens watched the stars walk down a red carpet before the event was broadcast from the PSD Bank Dome.

Julian Lennon, the son of the Beatles' John Lennon, said as he entered that he had not seen a concert in years and was looking forward to it.

The rock band Muse, which won the best rock award, said it was dedicating its victory to the people of Ukraine and Iran.

Kalush Orchestra's frontman Oleh Psiuk, donning a pink hat, said before the performance that he hoped more Ukrainian bands would be present next year.

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Entertainment

As India's Bollywood Shifts, Stars and Snappers Click

Paparazzi, here taking pictures and videos of Indian actress Akanksha Puri (R), have developed an increasingly symbiotic relationship with Bollywood. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP
Paparazzi, here taking pictures and videos of Indian actress Akanksha Puri (R), have developed an increasingly symbiotic relationship with Bollywood. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP
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As India's Bollywood Shifts, Stars and Snappers Click

Paparazzi, here taking pictures and videos of Indian actress Akanksha Puri (R), have developed an increasingly symbiotic relationship with Bollywood. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP
Paparazzi, here taking pictures and videos of Indian actress Akanksha Puri (R), have developed an increasingly symbiotic relationship with Bollywood. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP

From riding pillion on zooming motorbikes to round-the-clock airport stakeouts, India's celebrity-hunting paparazzi photographers have gone from "outcasts" to becoming a key part of Bollywood's vast film industry machine.
Times have changed for celebrity snapper Manav Manglani, who scored big at the wedding of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty in 2009 -- by climbing a tree and perching on a branch for hours to spy over the venue's walls.
"We ...were considered outcasts," said the photographer, describing the early days of his trade.
Fifteen years later, Manglani pushes streams of content to over 6.5 million followers on Instagram, AFP said.
"We are part of the system now", he said, commanding a squad of nearly 20 photographers who stake out popular gyms, chic cafes and luxury hotels, their phones buzzing with tips.
The team has divided the megacity into coverage zones, including someone stationed at the airport full-time.
Mumbai-based Bollywood, the core of India's Hindi-language film industry, is the longtime heart of moviemaking in the world's most populous nation and a major cultural export.
In celebrity-obsessed India, it can be a lucrative trade.
'Brand-building'
Bollywood began a century ago.
But it was in the 1970s that film magazines began publishing "inside" industry gossip, said Ram Kamal Mukherjee, a former editor-in-chief of Stardust magazine.
The Bollywood publication brought "stories from the studios, bedroom stories, stories from the make-up van", he said.
The first wave of paparazzi began in India in the early 2000s, with freelance photographers chasing celebrities.
The insatiable demand by social media and ubiquitous availability of smartphones shifted gears again -- with photographers no longer "just providing pictures" but working to help produce a narrative, he said.
"Today there is intervention," Mukherjee said, citing examples such as staged incidents where young actors seemingly spontaneously hand cash to beggars. "There is brand building."
That has come alongside wider industry changes, including viewers shifting from the big screen.
Traditional blockbuster spectacles drawing crowds into cinemas have been challenged by long-format narratives on streaming platforms viewed at home, commonly called OTT or "over-the-top" services in India.
This, observers say, has helped paparazzi develop a role in the publicity machine.
"Being an influencer with followers with a very popular page, helping them promote the movies, the OTT, and the brands... we are now important," Manglani said.
Indian movies released in theatres raked in an "all-time high" of $1.4 billion in box office revenue in 2023, according to consulting firm EY.
But competition is fierce.
Mandvi Sharma, a former publicist for mega-star Shah Rukh Khan, said the two sides can be "co-dependent", especially for younger actors hoping photographers can boost their fame.
"Things have changed", said Viral Bhayani, a photographer with over 12 million Instagram followers, recalling how a decade ago he would have to "beg" for information about organized media events.
It's been quite a shift, "from being thrown out of places... to now being called everywhere", he said.
Bollywood also faces rising challenges from other Indian-language film centers. Of the country's 1,796 cinema releases last year, just 218 were Bollywood's traditional fare of Hindi-language movies, said EY.
'Need us'
Photographers now snap more candid images of celebrity daily lives, often more relatable to millions of fans than red carpet glamour or formal magazine shoots.
Despite their careers being more closely linked, old frictions remain, especially for big-name stars.
In 2023, Bollywood star Alia Bhatt made a police complaint for "gross invasion" of privacy after two photographers took pictures of her at home from a neighbouring rooftop.

But Manglani said his images are also a useful barometer to measure actors' presence on the screen.
Producers, directors and the brands, "are keenly watching whom am I featuring... what's happening, and what is the traction on that celebrity," Manglani said.
"We used to run behind them," he said. "We wanted money, we were earning by the picture... Now it's both ways. They also need us, we also need them."
Sneh Zala, a younger celebrity snapper, sees his job as a service for both sides.
"I want the fans... to see where their favourite celebrities are going, what they are doing in their lives," said Zala.
"I am just the mediator between the actors and their fans."