‘SNL50: Homecoming Concert’ Most Memorable Moments: Lady Gaga, ‘Post Nirvana,’ Jack White, Cher, Will Ferrell, Robyn and More
John Mulaney may have spoken best to the mostly wonderful randomness of the lineup for Friday night’s live “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” special when, late in the show, he invoked the memory of “Saturday Night Live’s” much-missed music guru, Hal Willner. The comedian spoke about how the seminal figure in “SNL” music history would have loved many of the acts on the bill if he were still around. “He also would have hated parts of tonight, and I would have loved to talk with him about the parts he hated,” Mulaney added.
Truth be told, there wasn’t much of the nearly three-and-a-half-hour Peacock telecast that would have counted as a hate-watch for the average open-minded viewer, with the vast majority of the multiple-generation-spanning artists acquitting themselves. There were no train wrecks, although Bill Murray’s seemingly improvised schtick and a messy Post Malone/Nirvana crossover episode fell short of expectations. But any show that has Jack White, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Lauryn Hill, David Byrne, Robyn and Cher sharing a stage is going for more than just a ratings grab, going some distance toward recreating the classic eclecticism of the 50-year-old show at its tastemaking best.
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Sure, the show missed some opportunities to allude to indelible performances of the past — like, wouldn’t it have been fun to invite Ashley Simpson to stop by for a redemptive do-over after all these years? At least Elvis Costello’s legendary false start from ’78 was referenced, albeit by an impish Eddie Vedder, not Costello himself. You can’t say the special didn’t break from nostalgia to find ways to be of the moment, anyway… not with a riveting performance of the Grammys’ record of the year, “Not Like Us”… by Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer.
Here’s a look at some of the show’s most memorable moments:
Jack White gets his army on. The show went through a series of numbers toward the end that seemed like they could be climaxes, including Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time,” which has a natural resonance for an anniversary show. But when host Jimmy Fallon was being asked to streeeeeetch to an uncomfortable degree, it was a lengthy reminder that the show still had one more trick up its sleeve. That was a closing appearance by The Only Rock Star That Matters circa 2024. White first played Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Real World,” a reasonably still-relevant 35-year-old protest song that provided the slightest of reminders that there’s major turmoil outside 30 Rock’s doors. Young may still own the song, but he’s never ripped through an upper-neck-stretching slide guitar solo on it like White’s. That segued into “Seven Nation Army” — which, cleverly, still incorporated some of the Neil lyrics at the start. If it’s good enough for every baseball stadium, it’s good enough to send off “SNL” into the next 50 years.
Lady Gaga’s talon-shaped hat in a box. Gaga’s performance of “Shallow” didn’t exactly lend any novelty to the show, coming just weeks after she’d done a very like-minded performance at FireAid. But that one went down in the middle of the night on the east coast, so chances are that most “SNL50” viewers were seeing and hearing it for the first time this year here… and it’s a song that packs a punch in this particularly crescendo-filled arrangement, whether or not it bears some recent familiarity. (Plus, bonus points for the black claw hat, as a choice that invoked the slightly scarier era of Gaga costuming.) The highlight of Gaga’s multiple appearances came earlier, though, when she warbled her way through “Dick in a Box” with Andy Samberg, sounding as earnest as if this were an outtake from “Joanne.”
Marty Culp and Bobbi Mohan-Culp take on Drake in the diss wars, whether they mean to or not. It would have been a mistake to revive too many of “SNL’s” musically inclined recurring characters, but this special arrived at the right balance. There were really just two we were hoping for, both involving Will Ferrell: the lounge-singer-style Culp duo, and the Blue Oyster Cult cowbell arranger. One out of two wasn’t bad. The pair ran through a medley that incorporated “Brat,” “Good Luck, Babe!,” “Unholy,” “Denial Is a River” and other recent hits, all getting the Marty-and-Elaine-at-the-Dresden-Room treatment, with the eternal joke being that these happily-marrieds really do mean to be hep but just are never going to think about lyrical appropriateness as much as getting the harmonies right. Their inclusion of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” would have made a suitable punchline even if there wasn’t a setup already embedded in Lamar’s rap: the repetition of that deviously Drake-trolling “A minor” line… which found the Culps really doing a yeoman’s job of searching for that literal note, possibly not quite aware they’re in danger of being added to a libel suit.
David Byrne in communion with Robyn, Arcade Fire, St. Vincent, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the Roots, the spirit of David Bowie and the whole world. It was up to Robyn to wear the oversized suit, or a baggy counterpart to Byrne’s formalwear that we think was meant to be a modest tribute to his boxy “Stop Making Sense” outfit. (Either that, or the “SNL” costumer just laid down on the job after too many fittings.) The closest “SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert” came to feeling like a real jam was during Byrne’s two separate appearances in the last third of the show. The first and most expansive of his twin performances had the long-dormant Arcade Fire coming back to life as his primary co-star for a medley of Bowie’s “Heroes” and that band’s “Wake Up,” with St. Vincent brought in to play the role of Robert Fripp. Adding the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at the close to prompt a New Orleans-style parade through Radio City Music Hall floor was inspired. Later, he returned with Robyn for a second medley, as her “Dancing on My Own” segued into Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).” That latter pick would have been a perfect closer for a show with “homecoming” in its title — it’s practically the best truly sentimental song ever written — but “SNL50” still had a ways to go.
Killing us softly by being on time: Ms. Lauryn Hill. Coming some time after the last tour leg of an anniversary tour with her fellow Fugees got canceled under controversial circumstances, Hill came through with an appearance that let everyone know what they were missing… and, who knows, might get again. The tour dates that Hill and company did do in the States a couple of years back had a loose, fun, spontaneous spirit about them, however carefully the setlists might’ve been calibrated, and this brief reprise was a reminder that we need her back on stage. It’s good that this one was not too long, though — it’s not like any human being could do a full set under that much fur without losing 50 pounds.
“Post Nirvana”: two great tastes that taste… just OK together. This was another “SNL50” appearance that risked reminding viewers of what they recently saw on the FireAid epic show. Except whereas the surviving members of Nirvana were fronted by a succession of female singers at that benefit (St. Vincent, Joan Jett, Kim Gordon and Violet Grohl), here, for apparently the first time ever, they reunited with a male singer fronting them: Post Malone. On paper, there was some reason to it: Malone did a set of Nirvana covers during lockdown that he is about to officially release on vinyl. But however adaptable Malone is to rapping, singing pop and more recently going country, something didn’t click here. Plus, we liked the previous sacrosanctity of the idea that, if Nirvana was going to reunite, it was only going to be behind someone who didn’t have a penis. With that rule out the window, this kind of smelled like meh spirit.
Bonnie Raitt can and will make us love her. If you had to pick just one artist in the world who engenders such universal respect that possibly literally no bad words have ever been said about her, it might be Raitt, who classed up the joint with two early ’90s classics, her slide-guitar-fueled cover of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and her tender song that eternally goes out to only the lonely, “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” Whatever you may think about Coldplay’s Chris Martin, meanwhile, you have to respect his new side hustle as a humble piano soloist, most recently before this as he had Grace Bowers add grace notes during his In Memoriam performance at the Grammys, and here as he basically fulfilled that same role in serving Raitt.
Brandi Carlile invokes immigration and gender identify in “The Joke.” Topical, much? Bonnie Raitt remains “the new Bonnie Raitt.” But if there’s one other “new Bonnie Raitt,” it’s Carlile, whose identity couldn’t be more singular but who does feel like the very best kind of successor. Carlile’s appearance here was implicitly a salute to the Grammys as much as it was a tribute to “SNL,” since she sang “The Joke,” a song closely identified with her appearance on the 2019 Grammys, which arguably made the difference in making her into a true mainstream star. It’s one of the great songs of the 21st century, and one of the few in this show that evoked a social consciousness outside of “SNL’s” walls. Too bad that any suspense is long-gone over whether she is going to hit those impossible notes live: Of course she’s going to nail them. And of course you’re going to give her a silent standing ovation, even being sure that she’d get there.
It’s OK to leave some characters in the past, if the script isn’t there. Not really sure what was happening here, since Murray’s lounge singer Nick is a construct some of us veteran “SNL” viewers still feel a great affection for. But it felt as if Murray was making this sketch up as he went along, and not in a way where the possibly improvised jokes were landing … or not stepping on the all-star background vocalists. The best that could be said about the segment was that it proved that if you put together Ana Gasteyer, Cecily Strong and Maya Rudolph as the aforementioned backup crew, they absolutely sound like they are as ready to step into a recording studio as the real-life cast of “20 Steps From Stardom.”
Gone fishnettin’: Cher dials it back. Can we just give Diane Warren a belated Oscar for “If I Could Turn Back Time”? No, the classic hit wasn’t ever in a movie, let alone one that came out last year. But it would just feel right, wouldn’t it? Just like it felt right watching Cher strut her stuff yet again in this power anthem devoted to this enduring sentiment: Regrets, she’s had a few, but then again, almost too many to mention. In sharp contrast to the theme of “SNL50,” and how Lorne Michaels and company actually managed to go 50 years without ever screwing things up too badly. Maybe her semi-see-through outfit spoke to that even more loudly than the song, as a salute to sheer endurance.
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