Beyoncé Tops Adele and Taylor Swift in MTV Video Awards

It won’t surprise anyone who saw her in Croke Park recently, but Beyoncé leads the nominations for the MTV Video Music Awards, based on a hugely positive reaction to her film and album Lemonade.

The singer is in the running for no less than eleven awards at MTV's annual video shindig, which will take place in New York's Madison Square Garden on August 28. The event has been moved from its more familiar venue in Los Angeles.

UK superstar Adele is next-in-line with eight nominations. Her single Hello, with more than 1.6 billion views, is the fifth most-watched video ever on YouTube. It was the first ever music video created for the high-resolution IMAX format. The video of 'Hello' was shot by the Canadian director Xavier Dolan. The track is the running for Video of the Year against Beyoncé’s ‘Formation’. The latter is the most overtly political work of Queen Bey's career. In it, she aligns herself with the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

The video has created considerable controversy with some conservative commentators and 'law enforcement groups' voicing their anger when Beyoncé performed the song at the Super Bowl, which is the most watched television event of the year. In one scene in the 'Formation’ video, a row of police officers is depicted with their hands in the air. A graffitied wall behind them reads, "Stop shooting us."

‘Formation’ was Beyoncé's first single from her sensational, confessional album Lemonade, which was released simultaneously with the film that she made for HBO in April.

Other nominees for Video of the Year at the VMAs include Kanye West's controversial ‘Famous' in which the rapper claims that he made Taylor Swift, ahem, famous! The song also includes a reference to the idea that Kanye might yet fuck Taylor.

The video features a naked woman, who rather resembles Swift, in bed with the rapper, as well as nude doppelgangers of other celebrities – including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Also in the running for video of the year are Justin Bieber’s hugely successful ’Sorry’ and rapper Drake's ‘Hotline Bling’.

The former is the sixth most-watched video ever on YouTube, close behind Adele's 'Hello', which was released on the same day in 2015.