Recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Foo Fighters accepted another career honor at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards this Sunday (Sept. 12), receiving the show’s first-ever global icon award and performing a three-song medley at the show.

The longtime rock torchbearers’ performance were introduced by Billie Eilish, who saluted the group as one who “an entire generation of music fans grew up with.” They began their medley with 1999 hit “Learn to Fly,” with drummer Taylor Hawkins paying tribute to late Rolling Stones timekeeper Charlie Watts with a “Charlie R.I.P.” message on his bass drum.

After pivoting to recent Billboard Rock & Alternative Airplay No. 1 “Shame Shame,” the band capped their performance with a blistering run through signature 1997 single “Everlong.” While they performed the climactic hit, a split-screen montage simultaneously playing clips from dozens of Foo Fighters videos from the course of their career was displayed both behind them and underneath them, projected onto the actual stage.

Following the performance, Grohl gave Eilish a big hug and accepted the award on the band’s behalf, saying, “We’ve been a band for 26 years, so it feels pretty good.” He went on to thank a number of figures from MTV’s history, pulled half-facetiously from a “list” he said the group had prepared but were clearly just improvising — including past VJs like Kurt Loder, Tabitha Soren and J.J. Jackson, and former vp of music and talent Amy Finnerty, often credited with helping give Grohl’s old band Nirvana their break on the channel.

“We’ll see you in 26 years,” Grohl concluded his speech.

When it came time for Normani to deliver her performance at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards, she decided to pull out all of the stops with a show-stopping rendition of “Wild Side.”

Opening up the song with a series of flashing reflections of herself and her backup dancers, Normani slipped into a white void, clad in a shining chrome top with silver lamé pants, showing off her otherworldly vocals and flawless dance moves.

As she reached the climax of the track, Normani decided to add in even more intrigue to her number and pay tribute to Janet Jackson’s iconic “Would You Mind” performance from her All For You tour. Teyana Taylor was wheeled out onto the stage strapped onto a metal board as Normani, seizing the moment, climbed up to meet her, and gave her mid-air lap dance before ending the number, hanging by her feet off of Taylor.

“Wild Side” wasn’t just Normani’s song of choice for her performance — the singer’s duet with Cardi B was nominated at the VMAs for song of the summer, alongside fellow performers like Justin Bieber, The Kid LAROI, Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo and many others.

Ozuna brought his singular flair to the 2021 MTV VMAs stage on Sunday night (Sept. 12), following choreo-heavy performances from artists like Normani, Chlöe and Doja Cat by… dancing with a group of giant teddy bears, in a charming (and charmingly family-friendly) showcase of new single “La Funka.”

The setup for Ozuna’s performance was a giant crane game, with Ozuna joined by a quartet of stuffed bears who were dancing away from the certain doom of being selected by the arcade attractions. As the Puerto Rican superstar galloped around the stage, his four bears morphed into an army of teddys, and the performance ended with a giant bear head replacing the enormous Moon Person within Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

After releasing Los Dioses, his collaborative project with Anuel AA, in January, Ozuna has stayed reliably prolific with singles like “La Funka.” The reggaetonero has been nominated for three VMAs over the course of his career.

Click here to read an updating list of Sunday night’s winners.

“Lalisa” has made its debut on TV.

Wearing a sparkly top and surrounded by dancers in masks, BLACKPINK member Lisa performed the fresh title track from her just-released, debut solo project for a segment on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, marking the song’s first televised performance.

Lisa released her two-song project, also titled Lalisa (her full name) on Friday (Sept. 10). The project features the song “Lalisa” as well as a track titled “Money,” and instrumental versions of both.

“It’s a good opportunity for me to finally let the world know, ‘This is who I am,’” she told Billboard ahead of the release.

Lisa is the third member of BLACKPINK to deliver solo material. Jennie was the first, dropping her single “Solo” in 2018. Rosé followed in March 2021, releasing -R-, which featured the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. No. 1 hit “On the Ground” and “Gone.” Jisoo will be the final member of the quartet to make a solo debut.

Watch Lisa perform “Lalisa” on The Tonight Show below.

Many Burning Man attendees are quick to point out that Burning Man is not a music festival. Rather, it is a crowdsourced gathering focused on art, community and alternative — and many would argue better — ways of existing in a society.

But any way you swing your fire spinner, the fact remains that there is a lot of music at Burning Man, with DJs in particular serving as a primary source of entertainment out on the playa.

This year, that was the same and also different, given that the official Burning Man was canceled and a “Free Burn” event drawing roughly 15,000 people happened in its place. It looked like Burning Man; it felt like Burning Man, but it many ways it did not sound like Burning Man, with the lack of centralized organization creating key differences in regards to musical offerings.

But the freewheeling nature of this year’s “non-event” did not make for a lesser sonic experience, and in ways, Free Burn actually offered a refreshingly voyage journey into sound. These are five reasons why.

No Massive Stages

Several sound camps on the esplanade — the inner ring of the giant circle at the center of Burning Man — have grown significantly in size during the past few years, with the biggest featuring setups comparable in scale to some of the bigger stages at Coachella. While these stages are often beautifully designed and good hubs for seeing higher-profile artists, swarming to and around them in order to catch a set can create a sort of hectic, overcrowded feeling that’s out of sync with the generally more go-with-the-flow spirit of Burning Man. This clusterf— vibe is especially pronounced when hundreds of bikes are parked in front of these stages during a particularly popular set. Given the size of these stages, the quality of experience can also feel compromised, particularly when so many more intimately sized events are happening throughout Burning Man.

Were these big stages on the playa during Free Burn? Nope! With the temporary restrictions issued by the Bureau of Land Management barring the building of any such structures, the esplanade (which, despite the lack of officially sanctioned infrastructure, was still a perfect circle) instead featured more bespoke experiences. These included, for example, the small tent featuring a Dolly Parton altar and 60 or so people getting super, duper down to remixes of classics by P!nk, Destiny’s Child, Will Smith and other late ’90s and early 2000s icons. This more homespun experience, and others like it, were delightful discoveries. And given that camps didn’t have to apply for permits to be on the playa, and anyone could just roll up and do their thing, these were also finds that would have likely been harder to come across had they been competing with the monolithic stages on-site in other years.

No Big Name DJ Chasing

Cycling hurriedly across the playa to catch a set by Carl Cox, or Damian Lazarus, or Above & Beyond, or Diplo, or Flume, or Slander, or Skrillex or Rüfüs Du Sol or whatever other marquee act you heard is playing at whatever given stage or art car can be exciting, sure. It can also be time consuming, physically draining and a distraction from the many other lesser-known, massively talented DJs one might otherwise discover playing at a random art car or smaller camp.

A few stars like Diplo and Lee Burridge did make the trek to Free Burn (respect), where they both played on the Robot Heart art car, (with Diplo leaning hard into his deep house-oriented Higher Ground output while playing tracks like the Angelos remix of his own “One By One”) beyond that, there were few big names and almost no official lineups. (Sound camps often post lineups on signs for passersby to see, although posting them online before Burning Man itself is typically frowned upon.) This year’s singular nature provided lesser-known artists a chance to shine and all of us who’d typically bike for miles in an effort to see the artists we see at most other major festivals anyways a more go-with-the-flow, discovery-style experience.

Fewer Options, Less FOMO

While it’s sort of bratty to experience FOMO at all whilst attending Burning Man, an event many people in the world would love to experience if given the chance, it does happen. With so much going on musically, one is bound to miss something great, and hearing your campmates expound on the out of body experience they had while contact dancing at the Mayan Warrior during sunset can make one feel slightly sour, if one wasn’t also there. But this year, fewer options meant fewer things to miss out on, and if something big was happening, you probably knew about it beforehand. This included the aforementioned sets by Diplo, Burridge and Ry X on Robot Heart. One of the only major art cars on the playa this year, Robot Heart’s fabled daily sunrise parties were major gathering points, and sleeping through any of them did arouse mild feelings of regret.

Less Playa Tech

In the last decade, the prevailing genre of music at Burning Man has become a style of tech-house commonly referred to as “Playa Tech.” It’s ultra minimal, and it’s everywhere, from ad hoc deep playa stages to the biggest art cars to the vibiest sunrise sets, where the sound facilitates the opportunity to stand in place for upwards of six hours while nodding one’s head slightly with eyes closed. Is it bad? Not at all. Has its prevalence become a bit tired? One could make that argument. But this year, with Free Burn creating so many switch-ups in terms of what artists and sound camps were there, the playa tech was much less abundant, clearing the desert airwaves for a greater diversity of sound.

More Of Everything Else

While it’s certainly possible to hear hip-hop, psych rock, soul, jazz and genres beyond dance/electronic at any given Burning Man, this year — with many of the usual suspects not present — space was opened for a greater diversity of sound. This meant not only the aforementioned pop music (usually a scarce resource on the playa) but the hip-hop sets booming from myriad art cars, the psychedelic rock being performed from the top of a bus on the esplanade Friday night — this six-person group’s cover of The Doors’ “Break On Through (To the Other Side”) was particularly righteous — and the DJ and a very petite art car who fused tribal house with Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” There was no lack of electronic music either, with legitimately excellent trance, house, bass, techno, progressive house and other genres booming from camps across the gathering.