Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong accuses MTV’s VMAs of forgetting about rock

Pundits found plenty of reasons to take issue with this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, but as far as Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is concerned, the biggest problem with this year’s show was a glaring lack of rock ‘n’ roll.
Armstrong took to Twitter to vent his frustration with the 2015 VMAs after watching the telecast, which was weighted heavily with appearances and performances from pop acts such as Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj. As he argued in a pair of tweets, organizers could easily have found room for any number of younger rock bands in between all the pop stars:Although it’s worth pointing out that it’s been roughly a decade — at least — since MTV devoted any real airtime to rock artists, and the network’s website reflects a viewership that doesn’t even really have much of an interest in the genre, Loudwire notes that VMAs past did a far better job of balancing rockers against the Top 40 acts that have always been responsible for a substantial portion of their ratings.
This year’s sole nod to the existence of rock music was the Best Rock Video award, which Fall Out Boy won for their “Uma Thurman” clip against a field of nominees that included Walk the Moon and Hozier — none of whom would presumably make Armstrong’s shortlist of next-generation rock bands. Green Day, meanwhile, cleaned up at the VMAs as recently as 2009, when they took home a trio of moon men for their “21 Guns” video.