10 of ‘Saturday Night Live’s iconic music moments
Few shows in the world of entertainment have spawned as many iconic musical moments as Saturday Night Live. The creation of Lorne Michaels has consistently delivered moments that have left its audience entirely agog, either through sheer brilliance, ironic satire or defining moments in culture, SNL is home to some of the greatest sonic landmarks of all time. Below, we’re diving in and picking out ten of the most iconic.
The sketch show has been running since 1975 and has consistently delivered watercooler moments throughout its tenure. Having triumphed with some of the most legendary comedians over the years, SNL has had a long tradition of welcoming a wide range of eclectic musical artists to arguably the most high-profile stage in television. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, though, and with a great big stage, one also provides the opportunity for somebody to choke on an even higher level.
Each episode features a musical guest, in the shape of a solo act or a band, who will then perform two or three tracks after being introduced by the show’s host. Please make no mistake about it; being booked to perform on SNL can make or break a musician and catapult them into the stars or the rubbish pile. Below, we have a delightful mix of both, with moments that launched careers and moments that shot them through the heart.
However, if you’re expecting to see a list littered with controversial moments or a series of bands who have been banned by SNL, then we may disappoint you. Here, we want to celebrate the good parts as well as commiserate the bad. Below, we have the ten most iconic music moments in history.
10 of ‘Saturday Night Live’s iconic music moments:
Kanye West (2013)
There was a coin flip in our office to decide which Kanye West we would enter onto our list of SNL’s most iconic musical moments, and, thankfully for Ye, we decided to focus on the music.
While his appearance sporting a MAGA hat and seemingly endorsing Donald Trump was one of the moments that signified Ye’s disassociation from his previous image, his appearance in 2013 performing ‘Black Skinhead’ is a moment that will go down in history.
Using stark colour clashes and upping the intensity level, West created one of the most iconic musical performances on TV ever. Hitting the mic like a Doberman, West is in full beast mode as he unleashes one of the most attention-grabbing performances the show has ever seen. If you needed a reason for why you’re closest friend pledges allegiance to Ye, then this video is all you need.
Ashlee Simpson (2004)
In 2004, appearing on SNL to perform two songs, ran through a rendition of her single ‘Pieces of Me’ without a hitch. However, when the pop star returned to the stage to run through the title track of her debut album, Autobiography, things took a turn for the worst. While the band began to play the song, the vocals for the first track began to play, and Simpson paused in horror. The lip-syncing plot had collapsed.
Clearly panicking, Simpson looked around at the band with the microphone held by her side with the vocals beating out unnervingly loud. After pulling off a series of improvised dance moves, Simpson walks off stage, and producers cut the performance and head to a commercial.
Returning at the end of the show alongside host Jude Law, Simpson passed off blame onto her band: “I feel so bad,” she said to the camera. “My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn’t know what to do, so I thought I’d do a hoedown. I’m sorry. It’s live TV. Things happen. I’m sorry.”
It has gone down in history as one of the show’s most embarrassing moments ever produced.
Elvis Costello (1977)
In 1977, Elvis Costello released his debut album My Aim Is True and not only earned a name for himself in Great Britain but also a growing fanbase over America. However, he wasn’t a superstar by any stretch of the imagination by this point, so an opportunity to catapult his career Stateside was one that Costello needed to grab with both hands. He did, but not in the way we expected.
The young upstart had never even toured America and was relatively unknown to the masses before his appearance. However, with a slice of fortune, he would find himself in the most coveted slot in television; this was his chance to become a household name overnight. Costello had just signed to Columbia Records across the pond, and with The Sex Pistols pulling out from appearing on the programme, Costello was drafted in at the last minute.
Given his opportunity to play the game and get a pat on the head from the producers, Costello saw a bigger and better chance for longevity, he would cause a stir. Comparatively tame by today’s standards, Costello decided to sing a song that hadn’t been agreed by the producers, belting out ‘Radio Radio’, a protest anthem for the commercialisation of art.
Costello was banned from performing on the show for 12 years by Michaels, yet the press he garnered from the stunt was more valuable than ever.
The Strokes (2001)
With Jack Black hosting, there’s always a chance that a musical guest will lack sufficient space to create maximum impact when they perform. Not so in 2001, when The Strokes not only laid the foundations for the decades of indie dominance but shattered every band around them as they did it, proving to be cooler than ice cold.
Performing ‘Hard To Explain’ from their seminal first album, Is This It, The Strokes, broke the mainstream with this performance as they officially announced themselves as the kings of New York and the new benchmark of cool. It was the moment the world stood up and took notice.
It’s hard to argue with it. The band arrive dressed in leather and ripped jeans with the kind of nonchalance that is only expertly practised. Below is some now-vintage indie gold.
Paul Simon and George Harrison (1975)
In 1975, many people’s dreams came true for Saturday Night Live fans as the show welcomed Paul Simon and The Beatles guitarist George Harrison for an exceptional performance of some of their most treasured songs. It sees two icons perched upon two stools honestly and authentically singing their songs; it’s about as good as it gets.
Perhaps the most pertinent point of the performance comes when the duo takes on the former Fab Four member’s own song ‘Here Comes The Sun’. A goosebump-inducing revelation, the performance set an incredibly high benchmark for other musical acts to follow. The duo’s sumptuous harmonies suggested they played together for some time and were so good it sparked rumours of a dual tour.
Instead, we just have this beautiful moment below.
Sinéad O’Connor (1992)
There can be no doubt that when the annals of SNL history are finally put to paper, one name will be written in by Lorne Michaels with a particularly tight pen grip. The Irish singer, Sinéad O’Connor, made headlines around the globe with her performance on the show as she chose her international stage as the place to make a damning statement about the Pope and the Catholic church by tearing up a picture of the former during her performance of ‘War’.
O’Connor, who started to sing the lyrics: “We have confidence in good over evil,” then held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II to the camera at the very moment she sang the word “evil” and began tearing it up in pieces, throwing them at the camera and stating: “Fight the real enemy”. Apparently, the photo was one that had been situated on her own mother’s wall since 1978. The production was almost halted. However, the feed kept running, and O’Connor found herself drenched in infamy.
While O’Connor explained her actions as a comment on the Catholic Church’s history of child abuse, she was still met with stony faces. In later years, she reflected: At the time of the incident, many people struggled to understand her actions and, a decade after the performance, she reflected: “It’s very understandable that the American people did not know what I was going on about, but outside of America, people did really know, and it was quite supported, and I think very well understood.”
Nirvana (1992)
As far as iconic musical appearances on Saturday Night Live go, there are few more burned into the collective consciousness than Nirvana’s 1992 appearance. It would become a crystalline vision of the juxtaposition that was beginning to swirl the band. They had become the most reluctant rock stars in the world and delivered a searing reason.
It meant that as well as Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl performing Gen-X anthem ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on TV for the first time, they would also play their obscure, noise-heavy ‘Territorial Pissings’ as part of the two-song set. They closed the show by wrecking their instrument in front of an agog audience.
But the real point of contention for conservative America was when, during the traditional cast-bowing credits, the band began to kiss each other as the SNL cast waved goodbye. Cue angry church groups and advertising money being lost — a perfect night for Cobain and co.
David Bowie & Klaus Nomi (1979)
Given a stage to perform on, David Bowie rarely let you down. The chameleonic master of costume and curation, Bowie stepped onto the stage of SNL in 1979, ready to deliver a performance that few thought possible on mainstream TV.
The performance called for three songs, and Bowie was keen to delve into his back catalogue to usher in the new decade. He settled on performing the brilliant ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, arriving at the microphone carried by visual artist Klaus Nomi and Arias, with Bowie unable to move in his oversized plastic tuxedo.
He was also keen to explore the limits of mainstream androgyny and performed his Station to Station hit ‘TVC 15’ in a skirt and heels. Bowie ups the ante on his final performance of the night as he dresses up as a puppet for his Lodger album track ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, utilising green screen to create a performance art piece worthy of any gallery, let alone Saturday night entertainment. Bowie gave the world one of the truly great SNL performances rooted in theatrical intrigue and artistic merit.
Cypress Hill (1993)
Cypress Hill, the now-iconic Californian hip-hop group, hit the headlines in 1993 when DJ Muggs smoked a joint during the live broadcast. Remembering that at this time, possession of cannabis was a serious offence, to be so provocative was a huge leap of faith and saw the group banned from ever appearing on the show again.
“Well, there’s a lot of stories behind why Muggs lit that joint,” Sen Dog later told Village Voice. “I remember Saturday Night Live gave us a green room and said, ‘Do whatever you want in here, just don’t light up out of here’. Muggs felt like he needed to make a statement with his performance. It wasn’t just the Saturday Night Live people saying he couldn’t smoke up on air. It was everyone: our record label, our management, our friends. I felt like, to me, Muggs wanted to make that statement.
“He asked me to light the joint up on stage, and I said ‘I’m not doing that, man'” Sen Dog continued. “Before we did that second song, we agreed that we weren’t going to light up nothing. If you look, I was surprised that he did that. People loved it—people at the show loved it, because at the after-party they said, ‘That was so cool’. But when the hammer swung and we were banned from Saturday Night Live forever, we understood how serious it was. And understandably so — the world wasn’t ready for anything near that at that time. If he did it now, I don’t know what kind of backlash he’d have, but in the early ’90s, it earned us a kick in the ass from Saturday Night Live, and I haven’t seen that episode in reruns. It would have been cool to do Saturday Night Live again, but me personally, I didn’t think it was a great thing to do for our first time on SNL, but we paid the price and we moved on.”
Arctic Monkeys (2006)
By 2006, Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys had become the wailing voice of a generation of British kids. The band had perfectly encapsulated life in Britain through their album Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not that they had become overnight behemoths—but not in America.
The Sheffield lads were still miles away from the undying fandom the experience in the States these days when they were offered the chance to appear on SNL. It would see the band give a typically charged performance, but it seemingly wasn’t enough to entertain everybody.
“That man just yawned!” says Turner as they power through the archetypal Monkeys tune ‘A Certain Romance’ in front of a less-than-enthused audience. The band may not have set the studio on fire, but back at home, the audience was bubbling with the question, “Who the fuck are the Arctic Monkeys?”
