Taylor Swift won “Video of the Year” at the MTV VMAs for her LGBTQ anthem “You Need To Calm Down” after opening the show with Todrick Hall and a line-up of drag queens for a pulsing rainbowed, CGI-infused performance of that track and her new track “Lover”.
Swift accepted the award with Hall and RuPaul's Drag Race star and Swift look-alike Jade Jolie. John Travolta thought that Jolie was Swift and tried to hand her the award.
Said Swift: “You voting for this video means that you want a world where we're all treated equally under the law regardless who we love, regardless how we identify.”
Swift noted that at the end of the video there is a petition for people to call for passage of the “Equality Act,” legislation that would mandate equal protections for LGBTQ people under existing civil rights laws. Checking her watch, Swift said the petition now has half a million signatures “which is five times the amount that it would need to warrant a response from the White House.”
