Every Viral Moment & Best Memes of the Night

On Memorial Day Monday, the 2025 American Music Awards kicked off live from the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, marking the awards show’s first appearance since the 2022 AMAs and its first ever on CBS.

It’s been even longer since Jennifer Lopez helmed the broadcast, with the multi-hyphenate set to host for the first time since 2015. She has, of course, long been a staple on the show as a performer and multiple winner.

For Monday’s show, Lopez kicked off the night with a rousing performance of “Dance Again.” Also performing were ICON Award recipient Janet Jackson and lifetime achievement recipient Rod Stewart. Additional performers include Benson Boone, Reneé Rapp, Gloria Estefan, Lainey Wilson, Blake Shelton, and Gwen Stefani.

Among the stars up this year for AMAs — which are voted entirely by the fans — are Kendrick Lamar, who has a leading 10 nominations, Post Malone, who is nominated in eight categories, as well as Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Shaboozey, who are all close behind with seven nods.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift — who has the most wins in AMAs history at 40 — is looking to extend her record with six nominations tonight, including Artist of the Year, Favorite Touring Artist, and Album of the Year for The Tortured Poets Department.

Read on to check out all of the must-see viral moments, which TooFab will be updating throughout the evening!

Just like she did 10 years ago, J.Lo kicked off the show with a short vocal performance before breaking into a lengthy dance to a medley of the year’s biggest hits. There was more than one technical snafu along the way, both involving lifts. She missed an extended hand entirely early on, and then had an awkward off-center flip.

We get it, it’s live television, and full props to Lopez for being able to create a whole moment based on how she first made it big — as a dancer. This wasn’t about celebrating J.Lo as a musician, but about J.Lo the dancer celebrating everyone else’s music.

And we all wish we can still move like that for as many years as she’s been doing this. But there were plenty of people kind of wishing she hadn’t done any of this, confused by her kicking off the show by celebrating all the other musicians.

In 2015, she made a comment that the night was about everyone’s music and not her, setting up that seven-minute performance. We got no such explanation this time, so you basically had to remember what she said a decade ago for this choice to make sense.

Many online are still scratching their heads trying to make sense of it. And if they weren’t ready for this dance montage, they certainly weren’t ready for closeups of Lopez smacking lips with multiple dancers of multiple genders.

Even Tiffany Haddish, who was the first presenter after this opener, had something to say about it. “How cool is it to have total superstar like J.Lo hosting the AMAs? Or as I call it, the JMAs,” she quipped.

“Our host has just danced to 23 hits in 6 minutes,” she continued. “Just from that opening number alone, Jenny from the block has got all her steps in for the day and got all her kisses in. Save some dancers for me, damn! You ain’t the only one out here single.”

And then there were those online who were still trying to figure out if Taylor Swift was going to be there — and then suddenly here’s J.Lo going off. And completely exhausting herself, based on the heavy breathing when she came out to talk.