Rod Stewart Collects Lifetime Achievement Award & Closes 2025 AMAs by Singing ‘Forever Young’

Sir Rod Stewart capped the 2025 American Music Awards by accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award and giving the audience one of his patented high-energy performances to end the show on Monday (May 26).

The 80-year-old icon was introduced by five of his eight children — Kim, Ruby, Renee, Liam and Sean — who honored their dad’s 60-year career, which has seen him sell millions upon millions of albums worldwide thanks to such Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits as “Maggie May, “Hot Legs,” “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Some Guys Have All the Luck.”

“I’m absolutely flabbergasted — I had no idea they were here,” a gobsmacked Rod the Mod said after hugging it out with his brood, cheekily joking that he’s got “eight all together … I didn’t have a television.”

Stewart recalled that when he started singing in the early 1960s, “well before all of you lot were here,” he said, gesturing to the crowd, “the reason I got into it was because I had this burning ambition to sing. That’s all I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be rich or famous.” The vocalist who began his career singing blues and R&B standards in his native England before joining the Jeff Beck Group and then Faces and launching his mega-successful solo era, thanked all the musicians he’s played with over the years as well as his biggest influences, including Sam Cooke, Temptations singer and solo star David Ruffin and blues great Muddy Waters.

Honors aside, Stewart seemed genuinely touched that five of his children were sharing the stage with him, shouting out the sweet surprise once again before plugging his Caesars Palace residency gig and then jauntily skipping over to the stage to perform his 1988 Hot 100 No. 12 hit “Forever Young.”

Wearing daringly tight pinstriped black pants, a white tuxedo jacket and a ruffled white shirt opened to reveal his chest and a chunky necklace, the raspy voiced icon looked ageless as he played air guitar while singing “May good fortune be with you, may your guiding light be strong/ Build a stairway to heaven with a prince or a vagabond/ And may you never love in vain,” as a trio of backup singers in shimmering black minidresses echoed the song’s ageless chorus back to him.

Stewart’s spirited show-closer also roped in a three-man bagpipe team, adding a bit more pizzazz to a performance that also spun through a Vegas-worthy tap dance break and a double fiddle and marching band drum solo.

Watch Stewart accept the Lifetime Achievement Award below.

The American Music Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.