The artist\u2019s responsibility met the demands of celebrity at Sunday\u2019s American Music Awards, where half the assembled talent was eager to comment on a new political reality and the other half was eager to promote new product before beating a path to their chauffeured SUVs.<\/span><\/p>\n The latter feeling was to be expected, of course, at the last major awards show before the beginning of the busy holiday shopping season.<\/span><\/p>\n But as the highest-profile ceremony since this month\u2019s earthquake of a presidential election, the AMAs \u2014 broadcast live on ABC from the Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles \u2014 also offered an irresistible platform to any celebrity who\u2019d spent the previous week and a half itching to say something about Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n The most vivid commentary regarding the controversial president-elect came from Green Day, the veteran Bay Area punk band that performed its song \u201cBang Bang.\u201d The lead single from the group\u2019s politically inspired \u201cRevolution Radio\u201d album, it\u2019s already a pretty heated number, with words that seek to get inside the head of a mass shooter.<\/span><\/p>\n Here, though, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong added a fist-pumping chant to the middle of the tune: \u201cNo Trump! \/ No KKK! \/ No fascist USA!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Time will tell whether Trump responds to the provocation the way he did over the weekend to mockery on \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d and a call-out from the cast of Broadway\u2019s \u201cHamilton.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But even if the protest fell on deaf (or merely sympathetic) ears, it was a thrill to see this choreographed back-slapping event \u2014 generally the least consequential of the major awards shows \u2014 ruptured by what felt like real, unfiltered anger.<\/span><\/p>\n Idina Menzel invoked the \u201cHamilton\u201d dust-up in her presentation of one of the night\u2019s awards, counting herself among the \u201cunsafe, scary theater people\u201d unlikely to be invited to Trump\u2019s inauguration.<\/span><\/p>\n And Sting, who turned up to accept a lifetime achievement award, appeared to refer to Trump\u2019s proposed immigration policies when he identified America\u2019s \u201cspirit of inclusion\u201d as the quality that made it the greatest country in the world. (Other big winners of the fan-voted contest included Ariana Grande, Zayn and Drake.)<\/span><\/p>\n John Legend took a similarly warm-and-fuzzy approach in his performance of \u201cLove Me Now,\u201d which he introduced by saying, \u201cLet\u2019s celebrate love tonight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Yet the show\u2019s typically harmless co-hosts \u2014 model Gigi Hadid and comedian Jay Pharaoh \u2014 went sharper, cracking jokes about the Electoral College, Melania Trump\u2019s plagiarism and the president-elect\u2019s inability to \u201ctell what color\u201d Bruno Mars was.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo I can\u2019t deport him,\u201d Pharaoh said as he impersonated Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n Mars himself opened the show with one of the evening\u2019s most appealing bits of good-times escapism. Performing his shameless retro-R&B hit \u201c24K Magic,\u201d the singer paused the song for a Michael Jackson-ish dance break that made clear how completely he\u2019d digested the last half-century of pop music.<\/span><\/p>\n The Weeknd was strong too, albeit in a very different way, singing his song \u201cStarboy\u201d from inside a kind of ice tunnel. You want chilly digital soul music about the nightmare of romance in the Instagram era? This edgy Canadian heartthrob is your (bogey)man.<\/span><\/p>\n And then there were the twentysomething weirdos of Twenty One Pilots, perhaps the year\u2019s most improbable breakout act, doing a medley of their hard-to-classify emo-rap songs \u201cHeathens\u201d and \u201cStressed Out\u201d (the success of which brought them to the stage to collect two awards).<\/span><\/p>\n Wearing filmy black masks that concealed their faces, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun might\u2019ve been registering their discontent with Trump and his thoughts on torture.<\/span><\/p>\n But then again, these Top 40 misfits \u2014 proud representatives of the swing state of Ohio \u2014 might simply have been having a bad hair day.<\/span><\/p>\n Source:\u00a0http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/music\/la-et-ms-american-music-awards-review-20161120-story.html<\/span><\/p>\n