The 51st American Music Awards took place on Monday, May 26, and many fans are still talking about what a letdown it was on social media. Among the many grievances, from a lack of live awards to Taylor Swift’s absence (and muted fanfare), it was the pre-recorded performances that seemed to be most off-putting to ticket-holding attendees and viewers at home. Blake Shelton isn’t losing any sleep over it, though.
“Just now seeing these stories about Gwen and I pretaping our performances for the AMA’s. We came and performed when the show asked us to.. Really nothing else to say,” he posted on X, accompanied by a shrugging emoji.
ICYMI: The televised AMAs made viewers believe that Blake and Gwen were performing live from the Fontainebleau Las Vegas during the awards ceremony. TikTokers in attendance, however, revealed otherwise, taking to social media to express their disappointment. While many fans, in response to these revelations, agreed that a lack of transparency was a bit shady, Blake and many of his followers share a different stance.
“Who cares! Your performance was great, as was Gwen’s. And your introduction of your wife was very special,” one fan exclaimed. “All good! No explanation is needed. You’re both awesome,” someone else commented. “Great performance by both y’all, no matter when it was recorded,” another X user wrote.
While the 2025 AMAs seem to be one of the first major award shows to garner flak for mismatched live and televised sets, Billboard reports that this approach is actually quite common.
Rebecca Norris is a full-time freelance writer living in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Over the past 10+ years, she’s heavily covered a range of lifestyle topics, including travel, home, beauty, style, wellness, and celebrity news. She is a graduate of George Mason University, where she earned a B.A. in Media: Production, Consumption, and Critique, along with a minor in Electronic Journalism. When she’s not writing, she can be found strolling with her Jack-Chi, Cash, sipping iced matcha lattes, indulging in delicious cuisine, perusing farmer’s markets and antique sales, collecting colored glass, getting lost within the pages of a book, and exploring new bucket-list cities.
