Madonna shares about her wardrobe malfunction at the VMAS 2026: 'My career was over'

Dubai: Madonna has won Artist of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards, 42 years after the same ceremony produced the moment her manager thought had finished her.

Accepting the award on Sunday, the 68-year-old opened with a joke, thanking her fingers "because I can always count on them", then went straight back to the first VMAs in 1984.

"Some of you were probably not born, I think most of you were probably not born, but I performed at the first MTV Awards," she told the room.

What happened

She was performing Like a Virgin at Radio City Music Hall, in a white wedding dress styled by Maripol, complete with the BOY TOY belt and crucifix earrings. The set involved descending a staircase built into a giant wedding cake.

"I had a little problem with my shoes, and one of my stilettos fell off, and I dove onto the stage to try to, like, make myself look cute and sexy, and I meant to do it," she said. "And my dress went up, and my butt cheek was hanging out, and in those days, butt cheeks were not hanging out. I just want to remind you."

What the audience read as provocation was improvisation. She rolled across the floor looking for the shoe, turned the recovery into choreography, and finished the performance lying on her back.

Then came the verdict backstage

"I went backstage feeling really proud of myself, and my manager told me that my career was over," she said.

She then corrected herself mid-speech, clarifying that it had not been her manager but the assistant to the manager, before deciding it was probably safer to stop there.

She has been telling this story for years

The anecdote has become part of her repertoire, and the details have stayed consistent.

Presenting Video of the Year at the 2018 VMAs, she described losing the shoe on the way down the cake and rolling on the floor looking for the missing stiletto, before adding: "After the show, my manager said my career was over. LOL."

Telling it to Jimmy Fallon a few years later, she stressed that none of it had been planned. "I didn't even know my butt was showing," she said. "It wasn't even like the whole butt. It was just like a butt cheek, like half a butt cheek." She added that those were the days when showing your backside was supposed to end a career, and that the opposite now applies.

Her stylist Maripol, who was in the room that night, has described journalists rushing around afterwards asking who the girl in white rolling on the floor was.

Like a Virgin reached the Billboard Hot 100 that December and was certified gold the following year.

What she said about the last year and a half

The rest of the speech dealt with the present, and with Confessions II, the follow-up to her 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 this summer.

"I want you to know I spent the last year and a half finding myself, believing in myself and really making the music that I wanted to make," she said, thanking Stuart Price, her collaborator on both records.

"To me, that really is the definition of being an artist. My hope for all of you tonight is that you spend the next year, or the next 10 years, or the rest of your life, doing the same, finding yourself and believing in yourself."

A full-circle night

Madonna led this year's nominations and opened the ceremony with her first VMA performance in 23 years, a medley running from the spoken-word introduction of One Step Away into Bring Your Love with Sabrina Carpenter, and Danceteria Afterhours with Charli xcx.

Alongside Artist of the Year, she won Best Collaboration for Bring Your Love and Best Dance for the Confessions II film.

Guinness World Records lists her as the best-selling female recording artist of all time, with more than 300 million records sold.