AMAs 2013: Best/Worst Performances

How … exotic. Katy Perry opened the show like the hostess of a Times Square Japanese restaurant, performing ”Unconditionally” in a kimono surrounded by tip-toeing dancers and with a precious garden as her backdrop, before disappearing in an embarrassed cloud of smoke. It was an especially strange choice of window-dressing (Japanese screen-dressing?) for what’s supposed to be one of the more directly emotional songs on her confident new album. B-

One Direction took the class factor up a few notches, singing the vaguely neo-folky ”Story of My Life” in sleek black outfits, although they at first rotated as if standing on a Lazy Susan, and their musicians hung behind a pile of what appeared to be twisted metal wreckage. Which is a little like what this performance sounded like when certain of these young men took their solos. C+

Now here’s a picture of class: Ariana Grande wearing a red mermaid dress and nailing her doo-wop ballad ”Tattooed Heart.” The starry-night backdrop was nice; the four male back-up singers, even nicer. Was this exciting? Absolutely not. But it gave the (perhaps false) impression that a steady hand in fact guided this telecast, and that we might get hints of beauty along with the ersatz Big Entertainment. B+

Smoke! Tight black clothes! Interesting facial hair! A gold guitar! Yelling! Imagine Dragons unquestionably brought the Modern Rock to the show with their performance of ”Demons” — but more importantly, they brought the drums. Big drums! Combined with the overactive smoke machines, they gave this stretch a decidedly Vegas feel — not a bad approach on this most populist of nights. B

The sparks flew during Pitbull and Ke$ha’s performance of ”Timber” — literally! There were huge sparklers going off during the climax of the Western-themed segment, which also included dancers wearing corsets and fringe, Ke$ha done up like Daisy Duke’s wayward twin, and Pitbull wearing his Pitbull suit. (I mean, Pitbull in a cowboy shirt — can you imagine?) Unfortunately there were zero sparks coming off the two stars. B-

”We’re J.T. and the Tennessee Kids, and this is a song about alcohol,” quoth Mr. Timberlake, bringing out the party-down band of too many to count that he first introduced at the Grammys earlier this year. The adage that there’s nothing new under the sun rings especially true at the AMAs, but this was certainly the most unforced performance up to that point of the night. It was also rather forgettable. B

Finally, a set that fulfilled the promise of this awards show’s particular brand of American cheese! If Florida Georgia Line had simply played ”Cruise,” that would have been enough, but they did it with a dude wearing a mohawk, a backdrop showing hilariously bad graphics of steering wheels and stop signs, and a really psyched-looking Nelly (from the song’s remix, which made it a hit) rapping his part — and throwing in a bit of ”Ride Wit Me,” too! A-

Like the proverbial diamond at the center of tonight’s gaudy engagement ring of a broadcast, inaugural Icon Award-winner Rihanna, by belting ”Diamonds” with an orchestra, elevated everything around her — and underlined the low-stakes, by-the-numbers glitz of the proceedings. It was over-the-top without taking itself too seriously: the definition of easy, Sunday-evening enertainment. B+

We’ll have what Miami’s having! Macklemore & Ryan Lewis & Ray Dalton & their band energized the night with a remote performance of ”Can’t Hold Us” outdoors in Florida. Macklemore scampered around as pumped as you would expect someone who just had the year that he did, while Mr. Dalton brought a bit of the cool his patron is generally too genial to project. They did Pitbull proud, and isn’t that the most important thing? B+

Salsa great Celia Cruz, who died in 2003, would not have been disappointed by J. Lo’s tribute — unless she was one to be disappointed by three real-time costume changes, a 44-year-old woman dancing salsa with two men at once, and that same 44-year-old woman performing acrobatics we couldn’t imagine, say, Taylor Swift even attempting. (That 44-year-old woman was Jennifer Lopez, just to be clear.) In a word? Wowza. A-

You didn’t think you would be going to bed without some piano melodrama, did you? Christina Aguilera and the duo A Great Big World played their ballad ”Say Something” without slathering it on too thick, which if you know the song, you understand must have been tempting. B

In the night’s first rap song not played with a band front and center, Kendrick Lamar very much carried the performance with his precise, forceful rhymes. Which is the only way to do justice to the two great songs he strung together, ”Swimming Pools (Drank)” and ”Poetic Justice.” B+

He wore leather pants. She wore no pants. The performance of ”Do What U Want” by Lady Gaga and R. Kelly — which started with the exchange, ”President Kelly, what are you hungry for?” and ”I want that… Italian,” and ended with the POTUS rejecting his sequin-clad secretary because their photos ended up on Instagram, or something — was, obviously, far and away the most important performance of the night. It was also a blast, and would not benefit from any special analysis. A-

Thank you, Luke Bryan, for bringing a little Matthew-McConaughey-in-Magic Mike to this program via the most gloriously, opportunistically rap-trope-exploiting pop-country song of the year, ”That’s My Kind of Night.” B

Lil Mama, who played Left Eye so wonderfully in the recent VH1 movie CrazySexyCool: The TLC story, did well by T. Boz and Chilli as she joined them onstage, and while her rap verse sounded a bit breathless, she never lost step with the highly demanding, nicely nostalgic, and entirely welcome choreography that distinguished this performance of ”Waterfalls.” B

The night’s greatest vocal performance went down in front of a lip-syncing computerized kitten that eventually cried, and it was of course brought to you by Miley Cyrus, who belted ”Wrecking Ball” with zero trace of the irony she lampooned so effectively with that green screen. One of the few performances worth watching, or simply hearing, again. And I’m pretty sure no animals were harmed during the making of it. A-