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Blake Shelton has weighed in on the controversy surrounding his and wife Gwen Stefani‘s pretaped performances for the American Music Awards. The show aired on Sunday.
At this year’s ceremony, Shelton and Stefani had solo performances on the AMAs stage, with Stefani doing a medley of her past hits along with newer single “Swallow My Tears.” The performances were not billed as prerecorded and were done in front of a live audience, but those attending the live show at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas felt “lied to” as they watched the pretaped performances onscreen instead of onstage in front of them.
“Just now seeing these stories about Gwen and I pretaping our performances for the AMA’s,” Shelton wrote on X. “We came and performed when the show asked us to.. Really nothing else to say.”
While it is not uncommon for artists to pretape their performances for an awards show, the fans in attendance at this year’s show took it hard when it was revealed that the couple were not in attendance. Multiple videos were shared of the empty stages and prerecorded video of their performances with captions that expressed disappointment in not seeing them live. “When Blake Shelton is ‘performing’ at the AMA Awards but there is no Shelton in sight,” one attendee wrote in the caption of their TikTok video where they showed a different band setting up as a video of Shelton’s performance aired onscreen.
Outside of the performances, many nominated stars skipped this year’s show and accepted their awards with prerecorded videos, including Artist of the Year Billie Eilish.
