Comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers opened their first televised Las Culturistas Culture Awards with a delirious, inch-perfect rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra.”
Though obviously not quite as elaborate as Gaga’s own video and performances, Yang and Rogers still pulled out as many stops as they could. There was a troupe of cane-wielding back-up dancers, some committed vocal runs, and stomping choreography. They even had fellow comedian Patti Harrison introduce the performance in a full “lady in red” get-up.
Yang and Rogers started the Culture Awards in 2022, spinning off the awards show send-up/tribute from their hit podcast, Las Culturistas. The first three iterations of the Culture Awards were held as a live-only show in New York City, but a more amped-up affair was held this year in Los Angeles after Bravo secured the TV rights.
The categories for the “Cultch Awards” themselves are absurdly broad and irreverent, running the gamut from vaguely legitimate (“Best New Artist”) to completely nonsensical (“Eva Longoria award for tiny woman, huge impact”). The nominees are similarly silly. For instance, Best New Artist found two SNL characters — Domingo and Miss Eggy — competing against Dr. Victoria Frankenstein, Sorry, Baby filmmaker Eva Victor, and reality star Gabby Windey (who won).
To that end, “Abracadabra” was one of the five nominees for Record of the Year, a category that, for the most part, comprised songs released within a respectable “Record of the Year” timeframe: “Abracadabra,” Addison Rae’s “Diet Pepsi,” Jensen Mcrae’s “Massachusetts,” and Remi Wolf’s “Soup.” The outlier was Aerosmith’s 1998 ballad, “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”
All five nominees were performed at the Culture Awards. Ben Platt did a dramatic, slowed-down rendition of “Diet Pepsi,” while both McRae and Wolf were on hand to perform their songs. Yang and Rogers returned to the stage to give “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” its due, using the track for the “In Absentia” segment honoring those who had “passed” — not died — but passed on attending the Culture Awards. Lucy Dacus even made a surprise cameo halfway through to help Yang and Rogers belt the track.
(And for those wondering, the Record of the Year winner was, inevitably, “Abracadabra.”)