Central Track Contributor
North Texas Performers Dominated Last Night's American Music Awards.
Last night, the 2015 American Music Awards aired on ABC, though they might as well have called it the North Texas Music Awards. After dominating the pop charts this fall, North Texas musicians counted for nearly half the night's live performances.
A late addition to the proceedings, Leon Bridges showed up to perform with Macklemore, debuting a new song off the latter's upcoming sophomore LP. In another high-powered duet, Demi Lovato joined Alanis Morissette on “You Oughta Know.” And, then, capping it all off, Harrison Ford was on hand to introduce Pentatonix's much-hyped Star Wars medley. If all that weren't enough, Nick Jonas and Selena Gomez made memorable appearances of their own.
Here's how it all went down:
First up, it was Selena Gomez, who turned in an impressive version of “Same Old Love,” one of the singles that helped earn the Grand Prairie native her second consecutive No. 1 solo record earlier this fall.
Colleyville-raised Demi Lovato then popped out not once, but twice during last night's proceedings, first performing her latest single, “Confident,” and later showing up Alanis Morissette during a duet of the latter's breakthrough 1995 hit “You Oughta Know.”
Then, with already a handful of televised performances under his belt this year, Fort Worth's Leon Bridges looked like an old pro this time around, swooping in to join Macklemore for the debut of a brand new song called “Kevin.” The condemnation of the prescription drug industry is loads heavier, content-wise, than Macklemore's previous single, “Downtown,” but Bridges' poignant chorus really helped sell the thing.
Nick Jonas, the only one of the locally-tied bunch actually up for an award last night — he ultimately lost the “Favorite Male Artist — Pop/Rock” nod to Ed Sheeran — proved himself a triple threat during his showing. Last night, the Dallas-born Jonas performed a medley of “Chains,” “Levels” and “Jealous” by starting off playing a piano before moving over to a microphone and, finally, knocking 'em dead on the drums.
Lastly, in a somewhat shameless move, the Disney-owned ABC brought out Harrison Ford to intro yet another Star Wars: The Force Awakens clip, as well as Arlington a capella group Pentatonix, which performed a medley of themes from the franchise. Gratuitous though it may be to tap an a capella group to perform a medley of instrumentals, their nonsense syllables were rendered mostly unnecessary once joined by a full orchestra.
A complete list of the 2015 AMA winners can be found here.
