A game inspired by Spotify Wrapped quickly and wildly unraveled on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday night, prompting executive producer Molly McNearney to step in and save her husband.
In conjunction with the release of Spotify’s annual year-end lists, Jimmy Kimmel took on the challenge of guessing his employees’ most-played songs.
Spotify Wrapped, which Kimmel noted was the talk of the JKL offices yesterday, presents users with personalized data on the songs, albums, and genres they streamed the most throughout the year.
The late-night game’s conceit was simple: Kimmel was presented with five JKL staffers (including sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez and announcer Lou Wilson) and five Spotify Wrapped screenshots. The host’s job was to pair each staffer with the correct list, directing them to stand in front of a giant screenshot of their top songs list.
Perhaps taking a page from his side gig hosting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Kimmel attempted to explain his reasoning to the audience as he made his choices.
“I don’t know if this is interesting to anyone,” he admitted at one point. “Including me.”
Once all of his guesses were locked in, Kimmel was shown which pairings he got wrong. Tasked with rearranging the staffers to make things right, the host quickly became thoroughly discombobulated.
“This is a terrible idea, Joelle,” Kimmel told writer and game participant Joelle Boucai. (Boucai, in turn, noted the game was head writer Josh Halloway’s idea.)
At multiple points, Kimmel made guesses that he’d already been told were wrong, provoking shouts of “No!” from his audience.
“Wow, the audience has turned on me,” Kimmel remarked. “What do you mean, ‘No’? What have I done?!”
When McNearney—Kimmel’s executive producer and wife—attempted to explain what he was doing wrong, Kimmel took another strategy.
“Molly, come help me real quick,” he suggested. “This is embarrassing now.”
“He’s really good at a lot of other things,” McNearney assured the audience as she walked on stage to suggest a new order for the lineup of staffers.
When her guesses proved correct, McNearney returned to celebrate and jokingly spar with Kimmel, who issued a tongue-in-cheek warning to viewers. “I’m gonna tell you right now: I know it’s the holidays, but a lot of people are going to be fired tonight.”
