In June, Jimmy Kimmel started his annual summer vacation, so over the past few weeks, a slate of guests hosts have been filling in on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Last night, YouTube star Mark Rober, who has guested on the show numerous times over the years, took over the reigns and served as host. Given his background in engineering and science, he managed to incorporate those interests throughout the show, including with the episode’s musical performance from Demi Lovato.
Standing next to Lovato, Rober said, “At this point, I’ve been the bit guy on Kimmel!, I’ve been on the couch to be interviewed, I’ve now been the host, but what Jimmy would never allow me to be is the musical guest, and there’s a good reason for that: It’s because I have no musical talent.”
He noted, though, that he constructed something to help him be a good musical guest, which was on the table in front of Lovato and him. It was a toy Thomas The Tank Engine train on a track, and as it moved around the loop, implements attached to it struck glasses of water and Tic Tac boxes on fork levers. All of this was arranged in such a way that when the train passed by and interacted with these things, it played a simplified version of Lovato’s 2015 single “Confident.” Once the train got going, Rober added additional percussion by banging on paint cans, the Kimmel! house band fleshed out the arrangement, and Lovato sang the song, with everything coming together for a neat and novel performance.
Lovato also sat down for an interview and talked about getting stitches the night before their Kimmel appearance, aliens, and more, so check out the performance above and the interview below.