American Music Awards 2015's 20 Best and Worst Moments

Worst: Selena Gomez is a Material Girl 3.0

  OK, we need to officially put a moratorium on performances that look like Marilyn Monroe's Gentleman Prefer Blondes. It was brilliant when Madonna did it in 1985, charmingly meta when Taylor Swift recalled it for her 2014 VMA performance, and while it's still not as hackneyed as, say, Star Wars references, we should at least find something else for a pop star to do than descend stairs and be carted around by suitors. Also, those suiters shouldn't mix suspenders, Hammer pants, bad voguing and one tiny top-bun. 

Best: Jennifer Lopez Comes For LL Cool J's Hosting Crown

Pop star, actress and booty queen Jennifer Lopez turned heads at last year's American Music Awards, after teaming up with hip-hop pariah Iggy Azalea in a fiery performance of their 2014 single "Booty (Remix)." Last year's show not only affirmed J. Lo's cultural relevance, but earned her a gig as Mistress of Ceremonies for this year's festivities. Emerging from a pack of dancers in fur hoods and ambiguous tribal-print body stockings, Lopez opened her 2015 pop medley with a throwback: a slower, sultrier rendition of her 1999 hit, "Waiting for Tonight." In lieu of ramping it up to Waiting for Tonight: The Musical, she stopped and said, "[Tonight] is not about me … It's about the music." Still, there was her residency in Vegas to plug, and of course, a childhood in the Bronx to recall warmly to viewers. "I hope a little girl in the Bronx is watching this," said Lopez. Even her ex-boyfriend Puff Daddy couldn't help but show a smirk and a wistful glint in his eye as he sang her praises, shortly before introducing Collaboration of the Year.

 

Worst: Coldplay Stars in '2001: A Crap Odyssey'

 Walk the Moon sure did look like amateur idiots onstage, leaping around in their "New Wave band" Halloween costumes as though they need to convince us they belonged on TV. Leave it Chris Martin to show the newbs how a professional goofball does it. The Coldplay frontman hopped and crouched and spun his way through "Adventure of a Lifetime" with the kind of conviction only a deluded superstar can muster, in front of a ludicrous pop-psychedelic lightshow — nevermind Imagine Dragons, kids, here's the Soup Dragons! And that was all before the dancers in ape suits showed up for a routine so mock-Kubrickian you half-expected Martin to throw his mic into the air and have it turn into a spaceship. HAL 9000 singing "Daisy" would have been more entertaining. 

 

Best: The Muppets Say "Hello"