Favorite SNL Musical Moments
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Perhaps you've heard that Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th anniversary. They've mentioned it once or twice. From Lazy Sunday to Domingo to a ton of iconic musical performances, SNL has had a long and fascinating relationship with music. I'm Stephen Thompson, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about some of our favorite SNL musical moments. ♪

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Joining me today is NPR's TV critic, Eric Deggans. Hey, Eric. I got a fever, and the prescription is more talk about SNL. Oh. That's my... That was uncanny. Thank you. Thank you. Uncanny. My Christopher Walken. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm here all week. The fact that you had to say, my Christopher Walken, tells me it might not have been quite as spot on as intended, but I thought it was fantastic. All right.

Alright, well Saturday Night Live has always made a big deal out of its anniversaries, so its 50th was bound to be a spectacle. The Milestone has already spawned TV specials as well as Questlove's movie-length documentary titled Ladies and Gentlemen, 50 Years of SNL Music. I'm kind of cynical about this sort of branded documentary, and I was completely

hooked on this movie within the first 30 seconds. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen.

Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Saturday. It's fantastic. You can stream it on Peacock. Now, Eric, you've been watching SNL for decades. You've written extensively about the show. SNL incorporates music in a bunch of different ways. And I wanted to start with one of the ways it's been able to stay relevant in recent years, which is pre-recorded sketches like Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box. Or, you know,

Why have those worked so well over the years? Because I think one of the things that SNL had to do to kind of stay current with current pop culture in the music realm is satirize music videos.

And so what Lazy Sunday does is kind of satirize music videos, but it also kind of satirizes the sort of pseudo hip hop culture that has kind of inundated pop music. And so it's not necessarily satirizing actual hip hop culture, but it's satirizing this sort of milder form of it that we saw kind of pop up in like NSYNC and Backstreet Boys videos and stuff like that. And that's why it's so funny when you see the whitest guys in the world satirizing

you know, basically rap about the Chronicles of Narnia. This is the chronic, what calls the Narnia? We love that crime, what calls the Narnia?

And it's cut in a way to make it look like it's kind of the Beastie Boys, you know, if they were D&D nerds. So it makes sense that that would be SNL's first viral hit. And really, the success of that video way back in the day kind of inspired SNL to lean into that and do a lot more of those kind of satires, which gave us D in a Box and even further. One. Two.

Put your junk in that ass. Because that's the way you do it. It's my dick in a box.

Part of it that jumps out to me is it's a perfect example of looking at who you've assembled as your cast and leaning into their strengths. So you have Andy Samberg, and Andy Samberg is a very gifted comic actor, but he's also part of this kind of mock musical troupe, Lonely Island, and kind of leaning into their strengths, leaning into their talents to create these things. The other thing that always jumps out at me about the pre-recorded musical segments is

is it gives you a sense of how hard live TV is, how difficult it is to create those moments live in front of a studio audience compared to having...

a pre-recorded segment where you can get absolutely every little thing right. And so sometimes those segments jump out at me in the context of a 90-minute broadcast as, oh, well, that was by far the funniest part. Well, that's the part they got to fuss over and produce and remix and do all sorts of stuff with to make it last. Well, you know, one of the things you learn from Questlove's documentary, and you also learn this if you watch how Satellite Live's creative process works,

Lauren Michaels, the executive producer, what he does is he throws creative people in the deep end and sort of says, what do you got? Right. So so Lazy Sunday, I think, was something that these guys kind of put together because they thought it was funny and it became this gigantic hit. And then later on, when Justin Timberlake was going to host the show, Lauren kind of threw him together with Lonely Island and said, hey,

Try something. The doc sort of has these guys saying, they didn't really have that D in a Box video, the final version of it, until Saturday. They didn't really know what they had until right before the show was going to start to air. Part of the excitement is you have this deadline. And Lorne Michaels has often said, and he's been quoted saying this, it doesn't go on because it's ready. It goes on because it's 11.30 p.m. on a Saturday.

I think when SNL is at its best, it's using whether it's live energy or a very tight deadline. Like sometimes working with those limitations creates something that goes incredibly viral. And it's wild how that's worked for SNL over the years. Well, and I think the other thing to keep in mind about SNL and music is that it also excels when it's providing something that you can't get somewhere else. And

And the thing that's hard, I think, for younger audiences to relate to is that when Saturday Night Live first started airing in 1975, there were not a lot of places to see musicians or musical artists do what they do in a live context.

There wasn't that many programs that featured contemporary pop musicians playing their stuff live. You had American Bandstand where people went on and kind of lip synced and Soul Train where they also kind of lip synced. You had the Midnight Special that would go on super late on Fridays and ABC had this thing called In Concert. But if you wanted to see what David Bowie was like live,

Outside of buying a ticket, if you were lucky enough to live where he might be playing, Saturday Night Live was where you saw him. It's where I saw Frank Zappa play live first. It's where I saw Devo play live first. Are we not men? Men! Men!

You're hearing about all these bands and you're reading about them in the music press and you're listening to them on radio, but you don't really know what they look like live or what they sound like live until they come on SNL. And, you know, if Saturday Night Live has struggled in recent years, particularly musically, it's that idea that it's not really presenting you something that you can't find somewhere else anymore. There is a lot of competition. And so Lazy Sunday might be the last...

you know, example of when they did something that was special and unique and you couldn't really find it anywhere else. Yeah, I mean, you say that, but they have managed to find ways to surprise and innovate and come up with things that you can't get anyplace else. And one way they've been able to do that is by incorporating musicians who are game to do a little bit of comedy. Like, a few years ago, they had a sketch about an orchestra where they brought in Lizzo to play flute while twerking. This is a traditional symphony. You know, one where you sit down and play...

So you want me to sit down on the twerk? Got it. No. No.

They're still able to concoct things that you wouldn't really have another way. There's not necessarily another forum outside of, I guess, the occasional late-night talk show to create some of those music comedy mashups and sketches. They're able to do that in ways that most shows are not able to pull off. Yeah, maybe one of the more recent examples would be, you know, they've had sketches where they've had Bruno Mars and I think Ariana Grande come on and do impersonations of other people. Where do you refer?

With the hot guys!

Second location. So, you know, it's nice to have Bruno Mars and Ariana Grande doing impressions during the show, but that's not going to change the game the way Lazy Sunday did or the way the early musical performances did or some of the other things that they did. You know, having Captain Beefheart on this incredibly avant-garde artist, having David Bowie perform in a dress. Oh, my dear, it's too bright. It's too bright.

All this crazy, interesting stuff. Having, you know, the first hip-hop performance on live network television, which they also did. And there have certainly been, you know, and since we're talking about music, we can refer to some of the SNL bits that have, for lack of a better term, gone viral in the days before internet virality. Something like Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy doing Stevie Wonder doing Ebony and Ivory, and Joe Piscopo is playing Frank Sinatra. Yeah.

That's good. Good, Steve. We're talking salt and pepper. Stevie and me are peachy kings.

I mean, people could talk about them and you could watch them when they were replayed. But even that Ebony and Ivory thing, I think that happened in the 80s before a lot of people even had VHSs in their homes. And that was the point of it. You had to watch Saturday Night Live when it happened. Otherwise, you were going to miss out and you weren't going to see Eddie do James Brown in the hot tub. James Brown in the hot tub, for sure. Yeah.

So Eric, you mentioned the opportunity to see artists like David Bowie on television through SNL. You know, for the past seven years, I've put together a ranking of each season's musical guests where I will rank them from worst to best. You know, so I think the two of us can put our heads together here. What to you makes a transcendent

SNL musical performance, not in the sketches, but as like the musical headliner. Hopefully it shows you something about the artist that is a little revelatory that maybe you didn't know, or maybe wasn't widely known. And, you know, I talked about seeing Captain Beefheart for the first time, you know, you, you hear about how sort of odd and eclectic that music is, but to see it actually perform live,

You're just like, it's like a band got thrown down a flight of stairs, say some of it. Or to see Frank Zappa perform. And they even had the show's announcer, Don Pardo, read this narrated spot in the middle of the song, I'm the Slime. And it was just amazing for a fan of Zappa and a fan of SNL to hear those two influences come together. I'm the slime oozing out from your... Take it away, Don Pardo!

You will obey me while I lead you and eat the garbage that I feed you.

Another big one for me was seeing Prince do Electric Chair from the Batman soundtrack. Because again, you know, I wasn't able to necessarily go see Prince live anywhere. I think by then I had not yet seen him live in person, although eventually I would see him twice. And so this was just an opportunity to see Prince play live. And of course, he didn't play the song like it was on the record. He played it Prince's way, which was even more fun.

And I actually recorded that on a cassette tape and listened to it for many years. So there's your viral moment right there. Yeah. I mean, those are great answers. And you've certainly watched SNL for longer than I have religiously. I've kind of dipped in and out of it over the years until these last seven years when I've done these rankings. And what I've found putting the rankings together is that those segments work best in

either when you're introducing something that's never been seen before. A recent example that I would bring up is Childish Gambino performing This Is America. This is America. Don't catch you slipping, no. Don't catch you slipping, no.

He premiered This Is America in the second slot. Generally, you get the ladies and gentlemen, Childish Gambino, and then they perform the hit. And then they're like, once again, Childish Gambino. And it's, you know, God knows what time of night it is. But he trotted out This Is America, the world premiere on SNL, in the second musical slot. And to me, that was really special because you're watching this

deeply vibrant song and kind of experiencing it for the first time in a live setting in a way that felt exciting. And very often those segments can feel very canned and they're very constrained by that boxy space, by iffy sound mixes, something that I return to again and again whenever I do these rankings. Dude, the sound for artists on Saturday Night Live was bad for so long. Yeah.

So long. I first visited the show in 1994, and Seal was the musical guest. And I could not believe how crappy the band sounded in person. Yeah.

It sounded better on the broadcast. Interesting. But I knew they were great musicians. Yeah, I've always been sort of dismayed, particularly in the early seasons. But now, you know, that's been much more upgraded. Do you have a recent favorite? Do I have a recent favorite? I mean, you know, the last time I visited the show, Ryan Gosling was hosting and Jay-Z was the musical guest. Wow.

And just being in the room with Jay-Z when he's doing his thing was amazing, amazing, amazing. So that's my favorite. Wow.

I guess one that I would add to that conversation from recent years that has really stood out to me, did you see the Billie Eilish performance? Oh, yeah. She's performing Bad Guy, and they put her in a rotating cube. Absolutely. Awesome. So awesome. And they have a rotating camera, and they're basically able to, you know, and this is an old-fashioned movie scenario.

technique where it looks like the the dancer is climbing the walls and dancing on the ceiling but she did that and then they did this wonderful little thing it was a technique they did to make the stage instead of trying to make the stage seem bigger they made it seem smaller then at the end of the performance which was really dynamic and colorful and clever the camera probably

pans back and shows you kind of how they did it. And I just sat there at home like, you just showed me something I've never seen on SNL before. And it's a great song. And it's a great performance. I'm the bad guy. Duh.

That's the kind of thing I find myself looking for. If you have ways, if you have techniques to make that stage seem like something other than

a really boxy, straightforward, squarish room and make it look like you're performing in a wheat field, make it look like you're performing in a shoebox, make it look like you're performing someplace else. Kendrick Lamar has done some clever stuff with space on that stage. That's often what I find myself looking for in those live performances. Yeah, absolutely. One thing I wanted to touch on briefly was SNL's relationship with hip hop.

Because SNL, for all its flaws, has been a very early adopter for hip-hop. They had Gil Scott Heron performing on SNL in 1975. They had Run DMC kind of in their prime. They have...

Ben, I think pretty forward-looking about hip-hop and giving showcases for rappers to put their best foot forward on that stage. Yeah, without a doubt. And I think part of that is because so much of rap history is wrapped up in New York. And one of the things that SNL is about is it's about being about New York.

Right. So, and they had a lot of artists who would be, you would consider to be part of the downtown scene in New York. So, you know, Debbie Harry and Blondie and, you know, the Talking Heads and, you know, bands like that. And those bands, they really appreciated hip hop.

And, you know, the first live rap performance on national TV was the seminal rap group, Funky 4 Plus 1. And the reason they were on SNL was because Debbie Harry sort of interceded when she was hosting the show to have them come on and she introduced them. Please welcome my friends from the Bronx, the Funky 4 Plus 1 more. Yeah! Yeah!

♪ If you're ready for this ♪ - So there's always been this sense that, you know, the New York part of hip hop is something that SNL was interested in and liked. I also, you know, being the cynical media critic that I am, think it was also the show's way of pushing back against accusations that it was too white centered. - Right. - I mean, the very first musical guest was Billy Preston. So they're used to bringing on black performers as musicians. ♪ Nothing from nothing means nothing ♪

And it's their way of pushing back against the marginalization of women's voices. Garrett Morris is the only non-white cast member in the early seasons of the show. Yeah.

Well, 50 years of music, we could literally talk about this stuff all day. We want to know about your favorite SNL musical moments. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Eric Deggans, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It was so much fun. Always a pleasure. This episode was produced by Mike Katziff and edited by Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time. This message comes from Capella University. With Capella's FlexPath learning format, you can set your own deadlines and learn on your schedule. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.