One thing you cannot say about the 2024 Latin AMAs, which aired live Thursday night (April 25) on the Univision network, is that it lacked guts. Beyond its 21 performances on the evening, the awards featured many up-and-coming acts, as well as a group of hosts that included two music stars, Thalia and Becky G. Perhaps most interestingly, these hosts spoke in both English and Spanish, making this the first Latin music awards show in memory that was fully bilingual.
While we definitely appreciate the effort — and while we get Becky G’s much-touted 200% concept (as in, she is 100% American and 100% Latina) — the mix of Spanish and English sounded just too pat or downright forced. Yes, many of us do Spanglish, but because it comes naturally, not because someone made us do it.
Still, we have to applaud the willingness to experiment — which leads us to the performances themselves. When you feature 21 performances in a single evening, it’s a lot to digest, and also, a lot of quality to maintain. The challenge is bigger considering that many of these performances featured multiple acts simultaneously on stage. This took a lot of choreography. Still, the Latin AMAs managed to do an excellent job of keeping the pace flowing and the show moving at a fast clip — and in terms of staging and production, many of the performances were very pared down and simpler than, say, the Latin Grammys.
That didn’t detract from the show. On the contrary, it was refreshing to see acts like Marc Anthony and Morat simply perform and deliver without all the bells and whistles. However, in a sea of 21 performances, encompassing a huge range of genres, ages and styles, some things were definitely more compelling than others.
Here are all 21 performances, ranked from our least to most favorite.
