MTV GAVE HIM THE MOONMAN. HE GAVE THEM SILENCE.

It is difficult to think of a stranger sentence than this one, but here it is, on the record: the 2016 VMA for Best New Artist has gone to a thirteen-year-old classical pianist who does not, per his sister, know what a VMA is. LUCA STARR, of Loudoun County, Virginia, was named the winner of the fan-voted category at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. He was in the building. He was in a black suit two sizes too big for him. He came up on stage, held the Moonman with both hands the way a child holds a fish, said “thank you” twice, and left.

“I liked the trophy. It's heavier than I thought. It looks like it would break if you dropped it. I did not drop it.”

The Moonman, for those unfamiliar, is a small metal figure of a man in a spacesuit planting a flag on the moon, cast in aluminum, weighing about six pounds. It has been handed out, since 1984, to the year's biggest pop moments. It has never, in that time, been handed to a classical instrumentalist. It has never, in that time, been handed to somebody who was, on the day of the ceremony, still in eighth grade.

The vote, per MTV's own numbers, was decisive. STARR pulled more than forty per cent of the ballot in a five-way race. The runner-up, a pop vocalist with a well-established touring band and a decade of buildup, pulled twenty-two. Fan-voted awards are, historically, a coin flip. This one was not close.

The night's producers had, understandably, no idea what to do with him. They had booked him to present an award earlier in the show, a nod to the network's classical-crossover ambitions, and had not, per two people who worked the run of show, expected him to win his own category. When his name was called, they cued the house band to walk-off music. He waved it off, politely, and walked to the podium in silence.

The acceptance was the shortest of the night. Ten seconds. Two “thank you”s. One nod. A slight bow in the direction of the balcony, where his mother, June, was sitting. He then, per one crew member, quietly asked the stage manager if he could put the Moonman down somewhere heavy, because he was worried he was going to drop it. The stage manager took it from him. The stage manager was seen, backstage, holding it for the next hour.

Amara Starr, his sister and manager, said the family had been surprised the category was voted at all. “We did not think MTV was watching. MTV was watching. We are, again, taking notes.” The Moonman is now, per a photograph she sent us the following morning, on the mantel in the farmhouse, next to a school photo of Luca from second grade, in which he is missing his front teeth and smiling straight into the lens with his hands in his pockets.