It was Swift's big night, as she tied VMA records set by the likes of Peter Gabriel, David Fincher and Spike Jonze.                  
                                                                                                   It took 36 years for someone to do it, but at Tuesday’s MTV Video Music Awards, an artist finally tied the record for the most competitive-category VMA wins in a single night.

Peter Gabriel set that record — nine wins — in 1987, the year that his groundbreaking “Sledgehammer” video dominated the fourth annual VMAs. And this year, the woman that surprise presenter Justin Timberlake fittingly introduced as “the unstoppable Taylor Swift” also achieved that feat.

Swift positively sledgehammered this year’s VMAs, winning Video of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Video, and three technical awards for “Anti-Hero” as well as Artist of the Year, Album of the Year for Midnights (the release date of which she'd announced at last year’s VMAs), and Show of the Summer for her blockbuster Eras Tour. She also extended her record as the artist with the most Video of the Year trophies (this was her fourth win in what presenter LL Cool J called the VMAs’ “crown jewel” category), and became the first-ever artist to receive that honor two years in a row. (She’d previously won Video of the Year for “Bad Blood,” “You Need to Calm Down,” and last year’s “All Too Well: The Short Film.”)

And perhaps most impressively, by picking up her third Moonperson for Best Direction this year, Swift actually tied the record set by two other legendary visionaries, Oscar-nominated video directors-turned-Hollywood filmmakers David Fincher and Spike Jonze.