So I watched the American Music Awards last night. All three hours, live—like without being able to fast forward through it live. There was once a time when I’d be in the audience typing furiously on a Blackberry, writing pithy tweets and working on a news story that no one outside of the music industry read. Thankfully, I’m too old for all of that shit now but it is kinda nice being able to just watch these stupid shows and keep my shady thoughts limited to a group chat and not have to think about anything happening on that stage (not that anything interesting really happens on the AMAs anymore).
This year's show—hosted by Cardi B, who did a fine enough job at it—was largely an inoffensive sampling of today’s hottest pop acts. Like most televised award shows these days the whole thing was entirely too long and devoid of any real moment that made its run time worth the commitment. What I’ve always enjoyed about the AMAs is its commitment to capturing the zeitgeist in a particular kind of way. More than perhaps the Video Music Awards and most definitely the Grammys, the AMAs cares so very deeply about being trendy and tapping into what's hot right now at this very moment. Which is why I thought I was being pranked when I looked up from my phone and caught Walker Hayes’ performance of “Fancy Like.”
Before last night, I had no idea that “Fancy Like” was a real song. Like an actual song that an actual recording artist made and put on an actual album and released to the world. Before last night, I was under the (kinda wrong) impression that “Fancy Like” was just a jingle for an American casual dining restaurant I hadn’t been to in years. You see, like so many of the viral hits du jour my sole knowledge of “Fancy Like” was its hook:
I’d heard it time and time again while mindlessly scrolling TikTok at two in the morning and assumed—given the complete absurdity of its lyrics—that it was just a catchy jingle for Applebee’s Grill & Bar. The chain even made a commercial that riffed off of the dances people were doing on TikTok and because its users seem to have the magical power to turn even the most mundane sounds into earworms I thought nothing of it.
When I heard the jingle being sang live—like into an actual microphone—I thought AMAs had obviously scrapped the bottom of the barrel and was trying way too hard to keep up with what was happening on TikTok by booking whatever session artist recorded an Applebee’s jingle that blew up on social media. Turns out I was grossly mistaken. This was an actual record, by an actual artist—and it was currently one of the most popular songs in the country.
But whatever pity I felt as a possibly out of touch pop music writer was softened by the chaotic performance of this smash country rap ditty unfurling before my eyes. I’ve watched it about a dozen times now. The level of effort happening on that stage to combine all these dance routines these young TikTokers are doing made the whole thing look like a satirical performance straight out of SNL. There was an array of dancers doing entirely too much and the constant cuts to New Kids on the Block's Joey McIntyre struggling to keep up with his teenage son as they did the dances made me think of all the uncomfortable videos I've watched of adults getting embarrassed by their kids on TikTok.
And god bless Charles Edgar Walker Hayes. My goodness. That man was shimmying his little ass onstage like the rent was due alongside seasoned dancers and you had to respect his willingness to look like the cool dad trying to keep up. Granted the whole thing was giving Old Navy commercial and not award show performance. At any moment I expected a voiceover telling me to dig into summer with 60% off of cargo shorts and I couldn't tell if that was the intention. There's something about watching a man over 40 sing about upgrading his lady with a date night to a spot best known for endless appetizers in hopes of “squeak-squeakin’ in the truck bed all the way home” with zero shame that made me both deeply uncomfortable and intrigued. And while I'm still not checking for $10 boneless wings at least Hayes got me to stream his other stuff after stealing the show with the zaniest performance of the night. And isn't that really the point of these godforsaken shows?
