AMAs Host Jennifer Lopez Reveals the Performance She's Most Excited to See: I'm 'Always a Fan' (Exclusive)

Jennifer Lopez whitethorn beryllium connected hosting work astatine nan 2025 American Music Awards, but she’s besides location arsenic a fan!

The superstar is group to emcee nan night’s events connected Monday, May 26 — but tells PEOPLE that overmuch of nan gig’s entreaty comes from nan chance to link pinch stars from each crossed nan board.

“I'm ever [there] arsenic a fan. I emotion artists and getting to cognize them and being astir them and conscionable celebrating nan different things that everybody does,” she says. “I really americium a believer successful lifting different group up and celebrating awesome activity truthful I’m very excited to do that excessively this year.”

Lopez, 55, notes that there’s 1 capacity successful peculiar that she’s astir looking guardant to: Janet Jackson, who is being honored pinch nan ICON Award. Jackson, 59, is group to return nan shape successful what will beryllium her first televised capacity since 2018.

“I want to spot each of them, [but] evidently I’m a immense Janet fan,” she says. “I’m excited to spot Janet. I haven’t seen her successful years, and I’m gladsome that she’s being celebrated, too.”

Lopez past hosted nan AMAs successful 2015. This clip around, she says she’s besides looking guardant to honoring Gloria Estefan, who is group to execute a medley of her top hits.

“I retrieve having a bully clip pinch it and they asked maine to do it again this year,” she says. “I’ve been moving connected a batch of music, and it conscionable seemed for illustration a bully time. I conscionable emotion each nan euphony that’s retired correct now. I emotion that they’re honoring Gloria Estefan arsenic well, who was benignant of a pioneer of crossover. It seems for illustration a really beautiful twelvemonth to celebrate.”

Other performances will see Lopez herself, Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani, Estefan, Benson Boone, Lainey Wilson and Renée Rapp.

For nan Kiss of nan Spider Woman star, nan chance to return to nan AMAs shape is simply a typical opportunity to bespeak connected conscionable really acold she’s travel since her first AMAs capacity much than 20 years ago.

Lopez says she precocious sat down to watch immoderate early shows she did, and was struck by her development.

“We were conscionable looking astatine it to spot nan progression of nan worldly that we’ve done,” she says. “I don’t know, it’s conscionable a very important portion of my philharmonic profession and life. It was created arsenic an reply benignant of to nan Grammys, which was voted by an academy, and this was really astir nan fans. And I deliberation that’s what makes it really special, is that nan fans ballot these awards and show you, ‘This is euphony we emotion from nan year.’”

Though it’s been a infinitesimal since immoderate of those early performances, she adds that it each feels “like it was yesterday.”

“Everything feels for illustration I conscionable did it,” she says. “I retrieve nan moments. I retrieve getting dressed for them. I retrieve things group said erstwhile we were stepping to nan shape afterwards. So it’s each these astonishing halfway memories of my life that erstwhile you look backmost connected them… I don’t cognize that I get emotional, but I decidedly get like, ‘Wow.’ Happy. I’ve been doing this and I’m proud of that.”

This year’s American Music Awards will aerial unrecorded from nan Fontainebleau Las Vegas astatine 8 p.m. ET connected CBS and Paramount+.