Elton John appeared at the Cannes Film Festival in France this week, making his first public appearance since falling ill during his tour of South America.

John was at the festival to reveal the winners of a YouTube fan video competition. After telling the audience he was “feeling very well”, John went to the press conference with his longtime co-writer Bernie Taupin.

During the interview, John called out the MTV Generation, “We were before the MTV generation, and I’m glad we were, because we were real artists. The MTV generation brought along a lot of people who just made videos. A lot of the artistry went out of the music.”

While he had no kind words for the musicians, he had positive notes on the art of music videos, noting that “visuals, whether it is a painting, a drawing, a piece of film, a video, enhance music. You get to use your imagination – you get into it. The future of creativity is clearly collaborative, fusing art and technology, and it’s been fantastic to open up our work to the next generation of creative talent and to share that process with the world on YouTube.”