Awesome Music / Saturday Night Live

♫ Stop it! Yeah I'm talking to you. I said, stop it! ♫

Considering how long it's been around, there have been quite a few classic musical moments on Saturday Night Live, whether they come from a sketch or a musical performance.

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Sketches

• There's two names that many long-time fans of SNL would instantly associate with good music: Jake and Elwood Blues. The season 4 performance of "Soul Man" stands out for being one of the most memorable music pieces in the show's entire history, and if John Belushi's voice didn't win people over, the incredible dancing and absolutely gorgeous instrumentation did.
• The Cold Open for Steve Martin's hosting gig in December 1991 is a catchy showstopper where he declares that this episode he's going to give a full effort instead of phoning it in. The entire 18 person cast, Lorne Michaels, and even several of the crew members join in to declare the same thing.
• The "What Up With That" skits, with Kenan Thompson as the leading voice (and Jason Sudeikis' enthusiastic and funny dancing). Bill Hader plays Lindsay Buckingham, eternal panelist who never had a chance to speak or perform, but in one episode of the Season 36 the real Lindsay Buckingham stops there and gives an awesome, acoustic rendition of "Big Love". Definitely a must see.
• From season 37, guest host Jonah Hill is a guy who serenades his girl (Kristen Wiig) with the help of a classical band - until the music suddenly mutates into "See You When You Get There" by Coolio. Jonah's rap flow is surprisingly good, and the sketch ends with the cast taking it into the audience.
• A wedding sketch in which the father of the bride reunites with his college years band (Bill Hader, Ashton Kutcher and no less than Dave Grohl) and gives a powerful rendition of Crisis of Conformity's "Fist Fight", wrecking the place.
• "Massachusetts Afternoon" by the Blue Jean Committee. Even with the comic premise of awkward lyrics, this proves you really can't go wrong when you unite the musical talents of Fred Armisen and Special Guest Jason Segel.
• The legend of Odysseus sketch from the Christina Applegate episode in season 38. Jokey premise aside, Christina along with Kate and Cecily make a surprisingly good singing team.
• The farewell for Fred Armisen as a cast member. As Ian Rubbish and The Bizarros (with Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader and Taran Killam) play "It's a Lovely Day", they are joined onstage by Carrie Brownstein, Steve Jones, Kim Gordon, Michael Penn, Aimee Mann and J. Mascis, practically an indie/alternative Supergroup.
• From the 40th anniversary special, there's "That's When You Break" (sung to the tune of "Simply the Best"), Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler's hilarious and heartwarming tribute to Corpsing.
• "(Do It On My) Twin Bed", a pop song about being forced to have sex on your childhood bed when staying with your family for the holidays.
• "Back Home Ballers", a Thanksgiving-themed sketch and sequel to "Twin Bed" in which Your Girls rap about their families spoiling them rotten over their stay.
• "Crucible Cast Party", a sketch starring Lin-Manuel Miranda as a high school theater superstar leading a gang of desperately horny but socially inept fellow actresses. Melissa in particular gets a good riff towards the end of the song, and Lin is probably the best example of A Wild Rapper Appears! ever with his rap.
• The Dundee sisters, played by Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and host Amy Adams, are a trio of singing flappers in the '50s, and their almost-entirely-scatting musical numbers are surprisingly melodious despite being unnecessarily complicated.
• "Come Back, Barack", a loving parody of 90's slow-jams in the vein of K-Ci & JoJo (particularly "Tell Me It's Real"). In the song, host Chance the Rapper, Kenan, and Chris Redd play De-Von-Tre singing a jam begging former president Barack Obama to return and save them from Trump. The song went viral, and many have voiced their desire for an official version. It ended up winning an Emmy.
• Season 44 has Kate McKinnon suddenly belting out "Someone Like You" in the Cold Open, easily blasting her "Hallelujah" out of the water. Also, she's doing it as Jeff Sessions. Who's joined by Robert Mueller later!
• Cecily Strong really gets to shine in a sketch about a lounge singer, as she does her best Liza Minnelli impression, taking the classic "Jingle Bells" and jazzing it up in classic Broadway style.
• Melissa Villasenor gets a rare chance to shine in the middle of one Weekend Update, where she insists she's not a massive Lady Gaga fangirl despite dressing virtually identical to her - and then breaking into her rendition of "Shallow" (with Kyle Mooney as Bradley Cooper), which brought the house down.
  Michael Che: I'm supposed to tell a joke after that?
• Cecily again, with Melissa Villasenor and guest host Halsey, as sorority pledges who have to go on stage and sing the memetic classic 'What's Up'. Turns out that the three non-blondes' naturally husky voices carry the song perfectly.
• In the Sandra Oh/Tame Impala episode, one sketch has Kenan as a funky 60's singer on a Top of the Pops type program. The song he sings, "Electric Shoes," is a perfect blend of ridiculous and infectious, especially when he keeps coming back for encores again and again.
• Listen closely to the background music for the parody trailer Grouch; it's a slow and haunting version of the Sesame Street theme.
• "Slow", featuring both guest host Adam Driver and Halsey, is another send-up of slow R&B music—but with increasingly ridiculous exaggerations of just how slow the nominal male lover POV will be taking his preparations for the night. The fact that Adam Driver is also clearly delivering his verses in a version of the Kylo Ren/Vader basso profundo with a straight face is the icing on the cake.
• "On the Couch" by Kenan, Chris and musical guest The Weeknd is a surprisingly good R&B tune about falling out with your girl and spending the night on said couch. It gets a lot funnier when the reasons are all revealed (The Weeknd in particular has been on that couch after his girl left him for another guy long ago! It's that guy's house!).
• From season 46, Adele gets to host.
  • One sketch is just her Adam Westing in the show's recurring spoof of The Bachelor, where Adele repeatedly breaks out in song, with all the power and impact you'd expect from Adele.
  • The Weekend Update sketch notes that The Village People are raising ever louder objections to Donald Trump playing "Y.M.C.A." at his campaign rallies, so Chris Redd, Bowen Yang, Kenan Thompson, Beck Bennett, and Mikey Day take to the stage as the Village People for an equal parts awesome and funny Filk Song called "Stop It!" in which they threaten to shave Ivanka's head if her father keeps ignoring their demands that he stop using "Y.M.C.A."
    Colin Jost: You're saying you're going to shave Ivanka's head?! You can't just say that, that's gotta be a felony!
    Policeman (Kenan): Hey, man, everything is legal if you sing it in a song!
    Colin Jost: That's not true. Village People, everyone!
• "Stu", also from Season 46, is a surprisingly good take on "Stan", with Stu writing to Santa in hopes of getting a PS5. Even more surprisingly, the lyrics also contain allusions to some of Eminem's other songs.
• "Murder Show" from the Season 46 episode with Nick Jonas, a catchy tune all about women doing their favorite late night activities... watching gruesome true crime documentaries.
• "Boomers Got the Vax", a hilarious Boastful Rap by the entire cast dressed as elders who brag about getting the coronavirus vaccine (among other things).
• "It's Pride Again," a catchy upbeat song (sounding similar to "Holiday") starring the gay cast members (plus host Anya Taylor-Joy) about how exciting it is to celebrate LGBT Pride again... even when so much chaos can happen. The crowner is Lil Nas X (who is gay himself) in a fantastic flamboyant outfit dropping a rap verse celebrating LGBT history and how it culminated in the right to have a chaotic good time during June.
• "Squid Game" from the Season 47 episode with Rami Malek, a country song that not only parodies the popular show, but also "Turn Up On the Weekend" by Big Wet, who makes a cameo in the sketch. Both Pete Davidson and Rami Malek sing through their time at the Squid Game, and the doll from the "Red Light, Green Light" gets worked into the beat. And being a song about Squid Game, there are bouts of Black Comedy here.
• "Three Sad Virgins" with Pete Davidson and The Please Don't Destroy trio is a hilarious song where Davidson boasts about his celebrity life while continually mocking the trio as losers with no sex lives, much to their embarrassment. Even when they try to turn it into a Dune (2021) rap, Pete still humiliates them. It only gets worse for them when Taylor Swift is invited to sing the bridge of the song.
• "I Need A Big Boy", a rap song about finding a Big Beautiful Man to cuddle up with during the winter, featuring an infectious chorus sung by musical guest SZA.
• Bill Murray as his lounge singer character, Nick, singing words to the Star Wars theme. The words he made up get stuck in your head.
  Oh Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars
  Give me those Star Wars, don't let them end
  Oh Star Wars, if they should bar wars
  Please let these Star Wars...stay
  And hey, how 'bout that nutty Star Wars Bar
  Can you forget all those crazy creatures in there?
  And hey, Darth Vader in his black and evil mask
  Did he scare you as much as he scared me?
  Oh Star Wars, those near and far wars
  Oh STAAAR WAAAAAAARS!
• October 9, 1993: "Rock For Michael". After Michael Jordan said he'd retire from basketball, music stars sing a charity song urging him to change his mind. Featuring Aerosmith (Steven Tyler and Joe Perry as themselves), James Taylor (Kevin Nealon), The Proclaimers (Mike Myers and Norm Macdonald), The B-52s (Rob Schneider, Julia Sweeney, and Melanie Hutsell), Snoop Dogg (Tim Meadows) and Dr. Dre (Ellen Cleghorne), David Priner (David Spade), Meat Loaf (Chris Farley), and Eddie Vedder (Adam Sandler).
  Steven Tyler & Joe Perry: (sung to "Dream On") Play on, play one more year. Play for the fans, and play for the cheers. Play the Sonics, play the Knicks, too. Even the Celtics. We'll still root for you!
• "HBO Mario Kart Trailer" delivers two appropriate covers of the Super Mario Bros. theme song: an acoustic rendition for Mario's introduction (another excerpt plays sans dialogue during the title card), and a tense orchestral accompaniment for the race against Bowser.
• Please Don't Destroy ropes in Ramy Youssef and musical host Travis Scott for a music video about getting high in the club - which does nothing to repress the guys' anxiety issues and only drags them Off the Rails instead.
• In a similar vein, "Get That Boy Back" has three of the ladies, Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman and Chloe Troast singing a typical Woman Scorned country song, which suddenly takes a dark turn when the third woman has been acting out a Gaslighting long game meant to drive her man (musical guest Chris Stapleton) to the brink of insanity.

Musical Performances

• In the early, more experimental years, Saturday Night Live tried a few episodes that were predominantly musical showcases, with only a few comedy sketches. The second ever episode from 1975 was fronted by Paul Simon, and, to the delight of the live audience, a photo montage halfway through the episode served as an entrance cue for his ex-bandmate Art Garfunkel. Though relations between the two were still fractious at the time,^note  This is especially obvious when Art sits down and adjusts his microphone while Paul says "So, Artie, you've come crawling back!" and asks if his film career (a factor in their breakup in 1970) is over; though Paul is mostly smiling, there is audible ice in his voice. once they got going with a set of "The Boxer", "Scarborough Fair", and "My Little Town", the magic was back, and even Paul and Art were clearly enjoying performing together again. It still represents one of SNL's earliest "must see" moments.^note  It wasn't their first reunion - they had performed in Madison Square Garden in 1972 at a fundraiser for presidential candidate George McGovern - but it was the first one to be broadcast to a wide audience.
• Elvis Costello's defiant performance of "Radio, Radio" in the 1977 Christmas episode is both pure punk rock and a great moment in the series.
• The New York City Children's Chorus singing in the cold opening of the season 38 episode broadcast after the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy is also a Tear Jerker and a big Heartwarming Moment for the show.
• In the second season episode broadcast on Oct. 2, 1976, the musical guest was singer Joe Cocker. At one point, he started singing "Feelin' Alright". Then, for the second verse, he was joined by John Belushi...as Joe Cocker. The result was a highly memorable duet.
• From the Christmas 1998 episode. Vanessa Williams, Luciano Pavarotti, and the Harlem Boys Choir performing a spectacular rendition of "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" in Latin and English.
• From 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda performs a musical monologue to the song "My Shot" from his musical Hamilton with plenty of political jabs and a flawless segue from his opening.
  Lin-Manuel: You know, it takes 7 years to write a show, so I don't know when I'm gonna be back here. So I am [piano kicks in; singing] not throwing away my shot... [crowd goes wild]
• The cold open to November 12's episode, with Kate McKinnon delivering a gut-wrenching cover of "Hallelujah." Which later becomes a Funny Moment when the show pokes fun at itself, as the season 42 finale features Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump and the many characters of his administration singing the song together...and again in Season 46, following his real-life counterpart's defeat in the presidential race, when Baldwin's Trump played a sad rendition of "Macho Man" by The Village People on the piano the same way Kate's Hillary Clinton played "Hallelujah" on the piano.
• Taylor Swift’s performance of the ten minute version of "All Too Well" in Season 47 is beautiful.