Brace yourself for the morning of Sept. 27, when a viral video of #TeamInternet’s “A-list” performing “Y.M.C.A.” will clog your timelines.
Blame the Village People.
The supergroup that arrived thirty years before YouTube had a shot at making them famous will be closing the 2017 Streamy Awards, online video’s premiere industry awards show.
The group will perform a medley of their greatest hits with frontman and original lead singer Victor Willis. The show-closing performance at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills will mark Willis’ return to the group for the first time since the mid-1980’s.
Their audience of winners and losers winners (at this level, they are all winners) will include top tier digital creators Cameron Dallas, Lilly Singh, Liza Koshy, Logan Paul, Philip DeFranco, and Casey Neistat amongst other digital natives born decades after Village People’s disco heyday.
The Streamys make a habit of mainlining musical kitsch in to their show. Past guests include Starship, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Vanilla Ice.
To their credit, they have also identified and welcomed stars early in their careers that would now be out of reach. Only two years ago, Future, Alessia Cara and Hailee Steinfeld all performed.
Along with show producer Tubefilter and Dick Clark Productions’ reveal of the musical headliner, organizers also announced the start of fan voting for the two audience choice awards.
Yes, there are just two awards voted by fans.
But the Streamys are just an online popularity contest, with kids turbo-voting for their favorite bedroom-vloggers — like the Teen Choice Awards but with even more obscure and irrelevant “nominees,” right?
Wrong.
The Streamys are almost entirely a professional peer-voted awards show of merit, like the Grammys, Emmys, and Oscars. By way of review, here’s TheWrap’s dive in to the logistics of the voting and its semi-secretive Blue Ribbon Panel:
Last year’s Streamy Awards netted 750,000 livestream views, a 128 percent increase over the prior year. Additionally, over 6.8MM total votes were cast for the Audience Choice categories.
The 2017 Streamy Awards stream live on Twitter at 6:30 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, Sept. 26.