Four standout moments fromthe American Music Awards show.
Los Angeles County shattered its daily COVID-19 case record last week, but preparations for a live broadcast of the 2020 American Music Awards forged ahead at the Microsoft Theater. The event, which was broadcast by ABC on Sunday night, was the latest in a handful of music awards shows that have mounted inperson, indoor productions in the last two weeks, including the Country Music Association Awards (which made little mention of the pandemic) and the Latin Grammys (which fully acknowledged it).
The AMAs chose the Latin
Grammys route: Dancers and musicians who weren’t singing wore masks, winners collected their trophies from a table instead of receiving them from presenters, and the limited audience was relegated to the theater’s upper balcony, while cardboard cutouts of Beyoncé and Jay-Z got a front-row view. While the ceremony leaned toward the tame, a handful of artists managed to make an impression. Here are four of the night’s most notable moments.
Billie Eilish taunted the camera. Eilish’s music tends to feel more claustrophobic than expansive. But performing her new single, “Therefore I Am,” Eilish packed her live-wire energy inside the narrow corridors of a colorfully illuminated set evocative of a James Turrell installation. Her brother and collaborator Finneas was on hand, masked and playing bass. The video for “Therefore I Am” — in which Eilish gallivants around an abandoned shopping mall — reeks of mischief. She brought that vibe to the AMAs. Taylor Swift doesn’t love the drama, it loves her. In the run-up to last year’s AMAs, Swift’s performance celebrating her artist of the decade honor was clouded by the question of whether she’d be allowed to play the hits that earned her that title. According to Swift, Scooter Braun, the manager who had just acquired the master recordings of her first six albums, was trying to block her from doing so. In the end, she performed the songs, which she said she is in the studio re-recording.
Dua Lipa levitated, actually. In one of a handful of prerecorded segments that supplemented the live broadcast, Dua Lipa joined the party from the Royal Albert Hall in London. Typically more comfortable strutting and smoldering than outright dancing, she brought her A game for a performance of “Levitating.” When the camera panned away from Lipa in the bridge, it led into the evening’s most theatrical moment: Lipa, now harnessed, ascended into the theater’s fly space, making for a delightfully literal delivery of the song’s final lyric: “I’m levitating.”
Hip-hop claimed some space. In recognition of the “undeniable crossover success” of Latin and hip-hop artists, the AMAs introduced a handful of new categories this year — a step toward redressing some historical blind spots. Rappers also got significant airtime throughout the night, especially compared to last year, when rap’s presence on the AMAs stage started and ended with a Travis Scott cameo. Megan Thee Stallion debuted “Body,” from her new album, “Good News,” though the song’s spice was somewhat watered down by the network’s censors.