{"id":6553,"date":"2026-04-03T23:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T23:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/the-live-celebrity-cameo-is-a-played-out-ploy-for-virality-av-club\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T23:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T23:44:12","slug":"the-live-celebrity-cameo-is-a-played-out-ploy-for-virality-av-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/the-live-celebrity-cameo-is-a-played-out-ploy-for-virality-av-club\/","title":{"rendered":"The live celebrity cameo is a played-out ploy for virality – AV Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the recent Nottingham stop of her tour, Lily Allen picked actress and comedian Selina Mosinsinski\u2014better known by the name of her web series character, Charity Shop Sue\u2014<\/span>to be Madeline<\/span><\/a>. In case you don\u2019t know what any of that means: Lily\u2019s Allen\u2019s 2025 album <\/span>West End Girl<\/span><\/i> is a confessional pop concept record detailing the downfall of Allen\u2019s marriage to actor David Harbour; \u201cMadeline\u201d is a song on the record about a woman with whom Harbour allegedly had an affair; \u201cbeing\u201d \u201cMadeline\u201d ostensibly means dancing, posing, miming, pulling faces, etc. under a spotlight while Allen sings. During her <\/span>Saturday Night Live <\/span><\/i>performance last fall, actress Dakota Johnson appeared as Madeline, reciting the song\u2019s lengthy spoken-word passages while obscured by a curtain and emerging at the end to reveal herself as the titular other woman. My immediate thought while watching was, \u201cThis is gonna become one of those concert cameo gimmicks, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/span>
You know the phenomenon I\u2019m talking about: when a specific moment in a specific song by a pop star becomes the designated celebrity guest spot in their live show. Each night, a couple bars of a song are used to showcase a different famous person\u2014and to let the crowd know to pull out their phones for this one-night-only appearance from whoever\u2019s turn it is to be stunt-cast in a non-singing, non-speaking walk-on role that tends to entail little more than appearing onstage or on a jumbotron for a few seconds. The celebrity concert cameo has become a go-to way to generate viral moments from an artist\u2019s tour. Each night, audiences\u2014by which I mean both the people attending and the people who\u2019ll be watching the footage from the show online later\u2014can look forward to the appearance of a surprise guest. These appearances can be easily compiled into reels showcasing, for example, everyone who\u2019s played Role Model\u2019s \u201c<\/span>Sally<\/span><\/a>,\u201d from Kate Hudson to Rene\u00e9 Rapp to The Dare to Al Roker (<\/span>yes, really<\/span><\/a>). <\/span>
With the rise in popularity of short-form video content in general, musicians have been incentivized to optimize their music for viral, clippable moments. Certain songs (or more often, <\/span>parts<\/span><\/i> of songs) lend themselves easily to lip-syncs or bite-sized skits that can be replicated via TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. In addition to tapping into the viral potential of their songs through social media content, there\u2019s also a push to build these digitally marketable moments into live performances so those too can be fuel for content\u2014made by fans and marketing teams alike\u2014creating a feedback loop in which viral videos entice fans to come see these moments in-person and maybe even help continue the trend themselves. <\/span>
One of the most famous instances of the celebrity concert cameo spawned from a fan-made TikTok trend. Internet personality Kelley Heyer created a dance to the bridge of Charli XCX\u2019s song \u201cApple,\u201d which went viral on TikTok during the summer and fall of 2024 and led to Charli incorporating it into her shows during the <\/span>Brat<\/span><\/i> tour. Each night, just before Charli got to the bridge of \u201cApple,\u201d the camera would pan to \u201cthe \u2018Apple\u2019 dancer(s).\u201d Usually, this would be a celebrity (or two, or three) who Charli\u2019s publicly associated with: models like Gabriette, Alex Cosani, and Quenlin Blackwell, who\u2019d all appeared in Charli\u2019s \u201c360\u201d music video; Bowen Yang, who\u2019d played Charli in a couple <\/span>SNL<\/span><\/i> sketches; and even Charli\u2019s husband, drummer-producer George Daniel. <\/span>
The influence of the clip-economy on live music certainly isn\u2019t new, and neither is the trend of pop stars spotlighting a fan during their concerts. I was in middle school when Justin Bieber\u2019s \u201cOne Less Lonely Girl\u201d was topping the charts and thousands of girls would scream and sob to be brought onstage and sung to, and I remember the discourse stirred up by Matty Healy kissing his fans onstage (<\/span>and eating raw meat<\/span><\/a>, but that\u2019s a different thinkpiece). In an even cringier trend, pop singer Sombr has a segment in his live shows called \u201cThe Sombr Dating Show,\u201d in which he picks a fan to come onstage and call one of their exes on speakerphone. Pinkpantheress will often bring a fan onstage to dance with her during \u201cRomeo,\u201d but the guest star is usually just that\u2014a fan, not a fellow celebrity engaging in a publicity stunt (she did, however, showcase the now-Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani <\/span>during her rendition of \u201cTrue Romance\u201d in Brooklyn last fall<\/span><\/a>). Sometimes, a moment of viral audience participation doesn\u2019t require the singling out of an audience member at all. For example, the \u201cMute Challenge,\u201d started by Beyonc\u00e9 during her <\/span>Renaissance<\/span><\/i> tour: when Beyonc\u00e9 sings the line \u201ceverybody on mute\u201d in the song \u201cENERGY,\u201d that\u2019s her signal for the crowd to fall silent until the music starts up again. Artists like Cardi B and Olivia Rodrigo have since incorporated a similar moment into their sets. <\/span>
These moments still hinge primarily on star-to-fan interaction and an element of wish-fulfillment. With the celebrity concert cameo, the point is a sort of star-to-star moment of cross-promotion and audience-triangulation: raising the status of both already-famous people onstage and letting the audience live vicariously through them. Watching an actor or influencer dance onstage with your favorite popstar, you\u2014the fan\u2014can imagine what it\u2019d be like for you to be playing Sally to Role Model or Madeline to Lily Allen or <\/span>getting arrested by Sabrina Carpenter<\/span><\/a> in her Bachelorette Party-esque \u201cJuno\u201d intro (Carpenter is perhaps one of the most successful players in the concert-clipping game, having gone viral for her <\/span>cheeky, location-specific \u201cNonsense\u201d outros<\/span><\/a> and for her <\/span>raunchy and frequently controversy-generating acting out of various sexual positions<\/span><\/a> during the \u201cHave you ever tried this one?\u201d part of the aforementioned \u201cJuno\u201d). <\/span>
I\u2019m obviously not the first and won\u2019t be the last to talk about the negative effects that short-form video content has had on live music in recent years. Many musicians have grown frustrated with the way hyper-onlineness has caused a disconnect between them and their fans during live shows, with concertgoers treating the performer more like an image on their screen and less like an actual human being in the same room as them. Steve Lacy <\/span>smashed a fan\u2019s phone <\/span><\/a>after they threw it onstage (he later apologized for this) and voiced his frustration about fans capitalizing on live renditions of his hits for video content. Mitski\u2014who, like Lacy, has had her fair share of viral TikTok songs\u2014momentarily returned from her indefinite social media hiatus <\/span>to express her discomfort<\/span><\/a> with excessive phone usage at her concerts. Jack White\u2014famously a borderline Luddite who got his first cellphone just last year at the age of 50\u2014has been known to <\/span>enforce a no-phones rule<\/span><\/a> at his concerts. As part of his <\/span>Don\u2019t Tap The Glass<\/span><\/i> album cycle, Tyler The Creator <\/span>hosted phone-free listening parties<\/span><\/a> and urged listeners to, as the saying goes, \u201cdance like nobody\u2019s watching\u201d (\u201cdance like nobody’s filming an Instagram Reel,\u201d to get even more specific). <\/span>
Beyond being another facet of fans, artists, and marketing teams farming concerts for content, the live celebrity cameo feels symptomatic of the broader <\/span>Avengers<\/span><\/i>-ification of pop culture. Must everything be a reference, an Easter Egg, or a multiverse? Shouldn\u2019t we want more from our entertainment than just two famous people standing next to each other? Famous people stand next to each other literally all the time! A singer bringing another singer onstage to perform a duet is one thing. But really, what is the value in just <\/span>seeing <\/span><\/i>a celebrity guest walk across the stage, wave to the crowd, hug the star, and leave? <\/span>
Maybe the apple\u2019s <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>rotten right to the core. Some of these trends were cute, fun additions to live shows when they felt spontaneous, and when the artists in question knew not to repeat the gimmick until it got played out and predictable (there\u2019s a reason Sabrina Carpenter retired the \u201cNonsense\u201d outro bit, even if that reason was just that she could only come up with so many locality-based innuendos). Now when I see these stunts, they come across as blatant bandwagon-hopping, stars (and\/or their teams of digital content strategists) trying to reverse-engineer virality. It\u2019s easy to phone a famous friend for a 30-second clip that\u2019s otherwise virtually identical to all the other 30-second clips of other celebrities dancing to the same song. It\u2019s harder to create a truly memorable live performance. Sorry Sally, the wine\u2019s run out. <\/span>
Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in<\/i><\/b> Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound <\/b>and her \u201cmostly about music\u201d newsletter,<\/i><\/b> Our Band Could Be Your Wife<\/b><\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n

\n
Recommended for You<\/a><\/div>\n