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| FILE - In this July 12, 2013, file photo, Justin Timberlake performs during the Wireless Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. This year's MTV Video Music Awards is all about looking forward as artists with some of the fall's most anticipated new music line up to perform as the show makes its first stop in New York's Brooklyn borough. Timberlake and fellow lead nominees Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are scheduled to perform, but that's just the start Sunday night, Aug. 25, 2013, at the Barclays Center, where the show kicks off at 9 p.m. EDT. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- Even if the hotly rumored `N Sync reunion doesn't happen, the MTV
Video Music Awards are already shaping up as Justin Timberlake's night.
The
lead nominee - with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - is up for six awards.
Timberlake also will be honored with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard
Award, and the anticipation over whether he and his old boy-band
cronies will appear together will persist well after the show kicks off
Sunday night from Brooklyn.
MTV is officially
mum, neither confirming nor denying the rumor, and Joey Fatone has even
denied it officially. But `N Sync debuted a Twitter account Saturday,
and the hubbub has overshadowed what will be an all-star lineup at the
Barclays Center.
Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and
Drake will perform hit singles for the first time, and Robin Thicke,
Miley Cyrus and - if the spurned Stephen Colbert is to be believed -
Daft Punk square off in a song-of-the-summer competition. But `N Sync
has managed to steal the thunder.
"We're just
hoping we're not doing anything after them because anything after `N
Sync this year is going to be irrelevant," One Direction's Harry Styles
said.
One Direction didn't give any clues
about its role, and MTV has kept many details about the two-hour show
under wraps. Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, A$AP Rocky, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, Jared Leto and last year's host Kevin Hart (MTV has
chosen to go without a host this year) are scheduled to participate, and
former NBA player Jason Collins, who recently acknowledged he is gay,
will introduce Macklemore and Lewis' marriage equality anthem "Same
Love."
The Seattle duo is the surprise of the
year and is up for six awards, as Timberlake is. The Seattle rap crew
has the top song from the first half of 2013, "Thrift Shop" featuring
Wanz, one of five songs up for the top honor: video of the year.
Timberlake
- who's won seven moonman trophies - has the year's best-selling album,
"The 20/20 Experience," and his follow-up "The 20/20 Experience: 2 of
2," is due out in September. His "Mirrors" is up for video of the year.
Thicke's "Blurred Lines" featuring T.I. and Pharrell, Bruno Mars'
"Locked Out of Heaven" and Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble" round out
the category.
Mars, Cyrus and Thicke have the
next-highest number of nominations, with four. Pink and Thirty Seconds
to Mars have three apiece.
The show travels to
Brooklyn and the brand new Barclays Center for the first time, which
should change its
vibe. It also will change the iconic moonman trophy.
MTV commissioned Brooklyn artist KAWS to redesign the statuette for this
year's show.
