Best SNL Music Performances

John Belushi wasn’t averse to using his musical talents for comedy — check out his Joe Cocker impression sometime — but wanting to play the classic R&B they loved, he and Dan Aykroyd took the Blues Brothers seriously. That didn’t mean they stinted on showmanship as Jake and Elwood Blues: they had trilby hats, dance moves, even a cartwheel. (And the original “Soul Man” guitarist, Steve Cropper, reprised his licks.) They weren’t Sam & Dave, but they were arguably the best karaoke performers of the 20th century.

Date: Nov. 18, 1978 Host: Carrie Fisher

This is how you debut a new song: like a sexed-up Country Bear Jamboree at Walt Disney World, complete with a tablecloth bikini, a backing band in full hoedown mode, and animated bears frolicking in the background. Chappell Roan busted out a pop-country banger that sounded like a Shania Twain hit, only much more lesbian: “Only a woman knows how to treat a woman right,” she declaimed. Apt lyric for an episode with a Kamala Harris cameo: “She gets the job done.”

Date: November 2, 2024 Host: John Mulaney

Whoever was running the soundboard this night followed their heart: They mixed the guitars so loud that they felt like a storm drenching you to the skin. “Let me out!” Billy Corgan shouted, trying to make himself heard above the squall that he had summoned. Looking like a cherub himself, with apple cheeks and a full head of hair, Corgan flashed devil horns at the end of the song with a goofy smile.

Date: Oct. 30, 1993 Host: Christian Slater

Swedish pop pixie Robyn busted out moves that made her look like a teenager dancing in front of the mirror: twirling, high-stepping in platform boots, flailing her fists. Even with millions of people watching, she captured the loneliness of her song, about watching an ex kissing somebody else at a club. At the end of the song did she turn around and embrace herself so it looked like somebody else’s arms were around her? Of course she did.

Date: Dec. 10, 2011 Host: Katy Perry

Many of the best musical performances in Saturday Night Live history resulted in the artists getting blacklisted from the show: thrilling acts of defiance are not actually loved by NBC’s Standards and Practices department. Cypress Hill, for example, earned their ban because DJ Muggs lit up a joint on camera. Apparently, they were going out like that.

Date: Oct. 2, 1993 Host: Shannen Doherty

British singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading was a Van Morrison fan who learned an important secret from the man: how to repeat a phrase, turning it into an incantation that feels as if it might unlock some magic, if it’s late enough at night. And so, accompanying herself on a 12-string guitar, she introduced herself to the United States by singing hypnotically “I can really love, really love, really love, really love, really love, love love love love love love love love.”

Date: May 14, 1977 Host: Shelly Duvall

This L.A. punk band was booked by writer-producer Michael O’Donoghue because John Belushi was a fan: The show even hired a bus to bring 35 punks up from Washington, D.C. Fear kicked off with “Beef Bologna,” 60 seconds of high-tempo punk, with the D.C. punks slam dancing and stage diving. A few minutes later, a freaked-out Dick Ebersol heard somebody curse and pulled the plug. Reports that the studio suffered $200,000 of damage were inaccurate; the breakage was restricted to a plastic camera-case lock, worth about $40.

Date: Oct. 31, 1981 Host: Donald Pleasance

Five men from Boston did everything in their power to command your attention: air sirens, purple shirts, explosions of hair, a Flying V guitar, singer Peter Wolf dancing and leaping like the floor of Studio 8H was electrified. Also, the musician known as Magic Dick cut loose with the best harmonica solo in the show’s history.

Date: March 8, 1980 Host: Rodney Dangerfield

Plenty of musical acts on SNL change their outfits between the first and second song — Devo pulled off the unusual stunt of doing it midsong. They stripped off their matching yellow jumpsuits to reveal matching black T’s and briefs (along with kneepads and elbow pads), never losing their stuttering robotic groove or their ramrod posture. “Duty now for the future!” Mark Mothersbaugh shouted at the end, either proposing a manifesto or plugging the band’s new album.

Date: Oct. 14, 1978 Host: Fred Willard

Sometimes, the SNL stage exposes musicians as lip-synchers (hello, Ashlee Simpson!) or dullards. But it can also be a proving ground where a band shows that it’s more than the sum of its haircuts. Duran Duran probably would have made it without chops — looking good on MTV while swanning around on a yacht counted for more — but an unexpectedly high level of musicianship is always a stylish accessory.

Date: March 19, 1983 Host: Robert Guillaume

After spending most of the 1970s singing velvet backing vocals for everybody from David Bowie to Barbra Streisand, Luther Vandross finally launched his solo career and took the stage like a hungry man. A commanding performance, only slightly undercut by host Bruce Dern giving a speech insisting that Vandross was about to win the Best New Artist Grammy (he actually lost to Sheena Easton).

Date: February 20, 1982 Host: Bruce Dern

Brian Wilson, bearded and barefoot, played a solo version of his 1966 Beach Boys hit on a piano placed in a soundstage covered in sand (a replica of his setup at home). His voice was husky and his spirit was fragile, but his performance was moving. “I’m picking up good vibrations,” he sang, clearly wishing that it were true.

Date: Nov. 27, 1976 Host: Jodie Foster

A groundbreaking hip-hop performance on national TV, booked at the insistence of host Deborah Harry. Sure, their song was truncated and wedged into the final moments, but watching these five young MCs trade lines about Sugar Hill Records was history in the making and a great party. “The people on the show were so nervous,” remembered Blondie guitarist Chris Stein. “I remember trying to explain to them how scratching worked. Trying to verbalize what that is for someone who has no idea, it’s really difficult.”

Date: Feb. 14, 1981 Host: Deborah Harry

The Stones partied hard the week before this episode: snorting lines in the studio, ordering cases of Rebel Yell bourbon, spending late nights at John Belushi’s place. By Saturday night, Mick Jagger’s voice was blown out, which didn’t sound so hot when he rasped his way through “Beast of Burden,” but perfectly fitted this dirty valentine to New York City. Nevertheless, Jagger stressed out the NBC censors, shredding his own shirt and flicking his tongue at the camera like a sex-obsessed lizard.

Date: Oct. 7, 1978 Hosts: The Rolling Stones

Rodrigo was 18 years old when she made her SNL debut: on the list of the youngest musical guests ever, but placing behind the members of Silverchair (all of whom were 16 in 1995) and Zac Hanson (the “MMMBop” drummer was just 12 years old in 1997). With black fingernails and a black mood, singing about the boy who did her wrong, Rodrigo tapped into her teenage heartbreak and blasted it out to the world.

Date: May 15, 2021 Host: Keegan-Michael Key

The Strokes were favorites of the show, playing four episodes over the years, but they never rocked harder than the first time they appeared. Playing “Hard to Explain,” they set their guitars on “puree” and then locked into a staccato rhythm. “I’m watching TV, forget what I’m told,” Julian Casablancas sang, with the casual charisma of a guy who didn’t care if he was watching SNL or starring on it.

Date: Jan. 19, 2002 Host: Jack Black

“When you appear on nationally broadcast television, people really notice and show you respect, whether you are worthy of it or not,” drummer Chris Frantz dryly noted in his memoir Remain in Love. Talking Heads proved they were worthy of it, slowing down the speed of their Al Green cover to a molasses crawl while David Byrne hiccuped and howled.

Date: Feb. 10, 1979 Host: Cicely Tyson

The choreography for “Single Ladies” was so immediately iconic that Beyoncé did it twice in this episode and nailed it both times — once in a comedy sketch where her dancers were Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, and Bobby Moynihan, and once in this full-tilt performance with 11 women backing her up. One of those women was dancer Heather Morris, who subsequently visited the set of Glee to teach the cast the “Single Ladies” routine — thereby landing the scene-stealing role of the dim cheerleader Brittany.

Date: Nov. 15, 2008 Host: Paul Rudd

For their second song of the evening, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs could have played any number of great tracks from It’s Blitz! — instead, they reclaimed their own hit from 2003, which had been eclipsed by Max Martin and Dr. Luke rewriting it as “Since U Been Gone” for Kelly Clarkson. Karen O sang like her heart was breaking in real time, but it was Brian Chase’s ferocious drumming that brought “Maps” home.

Date: April 11, 2009 Host: Zac Efron

The original guiding principle for booking musical acts on SNL was finding people who weren’t usually seen on television — and so the show featured Leon Redbone four times, including two different shows the first season, making him a cult figure. He was a suave mustachioed finger-picker in a Panama hat who did seated performances of jazz, blues, and Tin Pan Alley classics. In an era that wanted shining objects to be crazy diamonds, not harvest moons, Redbone was a one-man time machine.

Date: May 29, 1976 Host: Elliott Gould

Bad Bunny’s swagger was actually a drawback on this episode when he was performing in comedy sketches: He was overflowing with confidence and seemed unwilling to do anything that would puncture his image. But his charisma served him well when he was singing — equipped with just a microphone and a mechanical rocking horse, he was riveting. That rocking horse was a total tease, by the way: How is it that we live in a universe where he didn’t end the song by riding it?

Date: Oct. 21, 2023 Host: Bad Bunny

Courtney Love played to her strengths: glowering charismatically, posing with one foot on her monitor, and unleashing one of the greatest screaming voices in rock history. Ever the provocateur, she capped off Hole’s performance of a song about sex and power and violence with a snatch of the Crystals’ notorious 1962 single “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss).”

Date: Nov. 17, 1994 Host: George Foreman

Run-D.M.C. pulled out a deep cut from Raising Hell, basically a solo D.M.C. track where he showcased Run’s often-forgotten talents as a beatboxer. “The three outlaws in the music trade/We won’t rob, but our job is to get paid,” D.M.C. rapped. Unfortunately, the hip-hop trio didn’t get anything beyond union minimum for their electrifying performance, but at least they set the high-water mark for looking cool in black leather on the SNL stage.

Date: Oct. 18, 1986 Host: Malcom-Jamal Warner

A show-biz feat not seen since Fred Astaire hoofed it on the walls and ceiling in the 1951 movie Royal Wedding! (Well, if you don’t count Lionel Richie pulling the same stunt in his 1986 video for “Dancing on the Ceiling.”) The old-school showmanship of dancing on a rotating set suited Eilish: She pogoed her way through the most menacing parts of her own song and delivered the most exuberant “duh!” in pop-music history.

Date: Sept. 28, 2019 Host: Woody Harrelson

A fake out for the ages: With the cast gathering on the stage to wave goodnight, the camera wheeled back to U2, who launched into the 1980 single that kicked off their career. As was his wont, Bono jumped into the audience for some crowd work, gave a semi-consensual lap dance to one woman, embraced Amy Poehler, and made Studio 8H feel more like a nightclub than a TV studio.

Date: Nov. 20, 2004 Host: Luke Wilson

Three years before the release of his landmark album Of Human Feelings, jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman previewed its closing track, basically soloing for five minutes straight while his five-man band, Prime Time, played a hyperactive funk groove. In an era when SNL sometimes booked musical acts because they were unfamiliar to viewers, Coleman proved the upside of that philosophy. His performance, a hurtling journey into mind-expanding sound, felt like a psychedelic car chase.

Date: April 14, 1979 Host: Milton Berle

A blast of avant-garde technicolor fun. Rocking an amazing beehive hairdo and playing a groovy organ lick, Kate Pierson was the star of the show. But drummer Keith Strickland made the greatest contribution to the party vibe: During the breakdown, when vocalists Fred Schneider and Cindy Wilson fell to the floor, Strickland crouched down behind his drum kit and kept playing. That’s commitment.

Date: Jan. 26, 1980 Host: Teri Garr

At the height of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the show did an episode billed as “Saturday Night Live at Home,” with cast members (and a few guests) doing livestreams and taped segments from their houses. As the musical guest, Cyrus sat by a campfire and sang a Pink Floyd cover, expressing the longing for human contact everyone felt at that moment.

Date: April 25, 2020 Host: None

Best part of this snarling performance: Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl shouting the title back and forth at each other. Fun fact: When everyone gathered for the farewell waves at the end of this show, host and NBA All-Star Charles Barkley was only the third-tallest person onstage, behind special guest RuPaul (who, admittedly, was boosted by high heels) and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic.

Date: Sept. 25, 1993 Host: Charles Barkley

Carly Simon suffered so badly from stage fright that she hadn’t performed live since 1972 (excepting a few duets at concerts headlined by James Taylor, her then-husband). So she accepted this TV booking on the condition that it be pretaped. Yes, that was cast member Chevy Chase standing in for Mick Jagger, singing harmonies and playing cowbell.

Date: May 8, 1976 Host: Madeline Kahn

On a St. Patrick’s Day episode, the Pogues played a song about an American who finally makes it back home to Ireland, but only because his corpse has been shipped back to his ancestral land for burial: “I’m a free-born man of the U.S.A.,” Shane MacGowan sang. Like the wake in his song, the performance was sorrowful and rowdy and full of drunken doom.

Date: March 17, 1990 Host: Rob Lowe

Performing on the night Gilda Radner died, Petty decided not to play his current hit, “I Won’t Back Down,” opting for this not-yet-a-single instead. Worried about the record company’s reaction, his camp decided to tell the suits that it was Radner’s favorite song. It was a gorgeous rendition of a future classic, but what was up with bassist Howie Epstein shrugging off an attempted hug from Petty at the end?

Date: May 20, 1989 Host: Steve Martin

Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, an OG musical weirdo, ranted like he was a crazy man on a street corner, brandished a lit cigarette, played a clarinet solo, and shouted “Somebody’s had too much to think!” Only 40 years old, he looked like a grizzled veteran and was nearing the end of his musical career. He was backed up by his Magic Band: They careened between chaotic noise and a blues riff that rolled over the audience like a city bus.

Date: Nov. 22, 1980 Host: Malcolm McDowell

Smashing a guitar is harder than it looks. After this gorgeous ballad reached its chaotic crescendo, Bridgers punctuated the coda by swinging her guitar overhand 16 times into her stage monitor, producing showers of sparks and doing some serious damage to the instrument, but not reducing it to splinters. A familiar move? Perhaps, but given how many viewers freaked out, one that still had power. Our takeaway: The Danelectro 56 Baritone guitar is a solid piece of equipment.

Date: Feb. 6, 2021 Host: Dan Levy

Harrison and Simon: two guys who were really good at harmonizing but who had walked away
from their previous partners. The highlight here was when Harrison took a verse in “Homeward
Bound,” finding new depths of empathy in “every day is an endless stream of cigarettes and
magazines.” Simon, a certified Friend of Lorne, was the show’s go-to musical guest for
decades—check out his 1986 “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” with Ladysmith Black
Mambazo—with only Dave Grohl performing on more songs.

Date: Nov. 20, 1976 Host: Paul Simon

Public Enemy had been lobbying to be musical guests on SNL for a long time, most notably when Sinéad O’Connor dropped out of a 1990 episode because it was hosted by Andrew “Dice” Clay. They finally got the call on an episode featuring Michael Jordan, Spike Lee, and Jesse Jackson. After three seconds of silence for the late Miles Davis, PE played their 1987 single “Bring the Noise,” their greatest jam, with the passion of men who had been waiting for years to do it.

Date: Sept. 28, 1991 Host: Michael Jordan

“Me and a buddy went in one of the rooms and got loaded in honor of John Belushi,” guitarist Mike McCready said of his visit to Studio 8H. On camera, the band started out intense and controlled, but by the end, singer Eddie Vedder and bassist Jeff Ament were pogoing and crashing around the stage. By the way, Vedder’s “Loser” T-shirt wasn’t an homage to a certain California singer-songwriter: Beck didn’t release “Loser” until the following year.

Date: April 11, 1992 Host: Sharon Stone

Taylor Swift was booked for just one song, but that song was her crowning achievement, the 10-minute version of “All Too Well.” Singing vulnerable lyrics with utter confidence, she commanded the stage — which was strewn with autumn leaves. At the end, snowflakes fell from the ceiling, a coup de théâtre that underscored how her song wasn’t just a wallow in the past, but a reflection on how much your memories can change when you revisit them after a few months, or a few years.

Date: Nov. 13, 2021 Host: Jonathan Majors

Taking a victory lap a full year after “Ms. Jackson” hit Number One, Outkast turned their bittersweet breakup song into a house party. The three stars of the show: Big Boi, André 3000, and André 3000’s pants. His trousers were so over-the-top — bright-white, covering his navel, striated with fur like a funky geological record — that they made his decision to rock a platinum Andy Warhol wig feel normal and sedate.

Date: March 2, 2002 Host: Jonny Moseley

For some reason, R.E.M. never played SNL when they were on the rise in the 1980s. The upside is that when they showed up in the 1990s, they swaggered onstage like total rock stars. Appearing louche in metallic trousers, singer Michael Stipe looked like he wanted to thrust his microphone stand into your living room. Note how he turned his back to the camera at the end so he could sing “don’t fuck with me” without making the curse obvious from his lip movements.

Date: Nov. 22, 1994 Host: Sarah Jessica Parker

Neil Young, discussing this performance in the book Shakey: “I developed a whole new technique for television. I had my trainer, and we just lifted weights and I did calisthenics to get my blood to the level it would be at after performing for an hour and twenty-five minutes — which is usually how long I’d be onstage by the time I did that song. To perform that song the way it’s supposed to be performed, you have to be at peak blood level.”

Date: Sept. 30, 1989 Host: Bruce Willis

Filling in at the last minute for Morgan Wallen, who was bounced for violating Covid-19 safety protocols, Jack White showed up with a hot rhythm section (all hail drummer Daru Jones). He opened with a taste of “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” his Beyoncé collab, before peeling the skin off the White Stripes’ “Ball and Biscuit.” That would have been plenty, but it was all a setup for covering Blind Willie Johnson’s “Jesus Is Coming Soon,” the 1928 blues about the 1918 flu pandemic: raw, relevant, righteous.

Date: Oct. 10, 2020 Host: Bill Burr

Irked that they were on an episode hosted by plutocrat and Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, the members of Rage Against the Machine protested by hanging American flags upside-down on their amps. Stagehands ripped down the flags just before Rage ripped into a brutal, furious version of “Bulls on Parade” — and then the group was banned midshow and escorted from the studio without playing a second song. “SNL censored Rage, period,” guitarist Tom Morello said. “They could not have sucked up to the billionaire more.”

Date: April 13, 1996 Host: Steve Forbes

Spitting rapid-fire verses over a live band rocking an Isley Brothers groove, working an asymmetrical hairstyle, and glowing more incandescently than the purple spotlight on him, Kendrick Lamar delivered the definitive version of this To Pimp a Butterfly track. “I done been through a whole lot,” Lamar began, and he then told us about his trials in detail. “What do you want from me and my scars?” he asked. His backup singers, with the chorus “I love myself,” provided the answer — which was salvation.

Date: Nov. 15, 2014 Host: Woody Harrelson

Hands on her hips, facing down America with a stare as unblinking as the red light on the camera, Patti Smith knew exactly what she was about to unleash. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” she sang, and then led her band into a galloping rave-up, their lower bodies moving like they had just discovered the wonders of rhythm and lust. Bonus points for shouting out NYC punk club CBGB.

Date: April 17, 1976 Host: Ron Nessen

By the 21st century, SNL prioritized record sales over sonic experimentations, but with the Number One album Kid A, Radiohead gave the show both. Thom Yorke convulsed his body to the rhythm of a rabbit heartbeat; Jonny Greenwood hunched over his gear like a mad scientist; the band locked into a propulsive groove. The horn section made the song, but it wouldn’t have been the same without Greenwood dialing a transistor radio into the mix. And we still want Yorke’s sci-fi wristwatch.

Date: Oct. 14, 2000 Host: Kate Hudson

Crazily, Saturday Night Live booked Prince for just one song, splitting the musical guest slots in this episode between him and another studio wizard, Todd Rundgren. Prince played “Partyup,” one of the few tracks on Dirty Mind without NC-17 lyrics. Leading his band (not yet officially called the Revolution) through a funk rave-up, he spun, posed, and rocked his falsetto. At the end, he knocked down his microphone stand, stalked offstage, and didn’t return to the show for 24 years.

Date: Feb. 21, 1981 Host: Charlene Tilton

Elvis Costello, annoyed that his record company was insisting that he play “Less Than Zero,” a song about British fascism that he thought would be inscrutable to American audiences, hatched a plan: He would interrupt himself after a few lines and then launch into a brand-new song, the scabrous and not-yet-released “Radio Radio.” The show’s producers freaked out — not because the song was offensive, but because it was unfamiliar to them — but the moment was thrilling and undeniably live. 

Enough years passed that Costello was invited to reprise the moment on the SNL 25th-anniversary special, interrupting the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and playing “Radio Radio” with the Beasties gleefully backing him up. (In her memoir Rebel Girl, Kathleen Hanna says the collaboration was her suggestion.) According to Costello, Bill Murray came up to him at the show’s afterparty and said, “Don’t let Lorne tell you that he was in on the joke. I remember him standing behind the camera, giving you the finger.”

When the Replacements took the stage for their first song, they were loose and raucous, just the right amount of drunk. Tommy Stinson hopped around the stage, not worrying about whether he was visible on camera or not. Making sure that Bob Stinson didn’t miss his cue for the guitar solo, Paul Westerberg shouted, “Come on, fucker!” “Bastards of Young,” an anthem for disenfranchised youth, electrified every teenager in the nation with a pulse. The Replacements’ performance was lightning in a cathode-ray tube, full of chaotic energy, crazy enthusiasm, and love for the amazing noise that electric guitars can make.

Lorne Michaels, however, blew a gasket because of that curse, ranting backstage that the band would never perform on television again. Despite that vow, they actually did a second song that night, even drunker — a chaotic version of “Kiss Me on the Bus.” With the Replacements, there was always a fine line between brilliance and a sloppy mess.

Date: Jan. 18, 1986 Host: Harry Dean Stanton

David Bowie closed out the 1970s by reaching back to their beginning, performing “The Man Who Sold the World,” the half-forgotten title track from his 1970 album. Because he was David Bowie, he was looking forward at the same time as he was looking back, so he recruited the New York City performance artists Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias to join him on Saturday Night Live. They prepared a declamatory, semi-operatic version of the song — which was brilliant and upstaged almost completely by Bowie’s outfit, inspired by the Dada art movement. His plastic “tuxedo” was so restrictive, Nomi and Arias had to carry the singer to his microphone.

Bowie did two more songs that evening: the 1976 single “TVC15,” for which he donned a pencil skirt inspired by the outfits of Chinese flight attendants (accessorized with a stuffed pink poodle with an embedded TV screen), and his recent single “Boys Keep Swinging,” for which he used early green-screen technology to superimpose his head on top of a marionette’s body. (NBC censored the lyric “other boys check you out,” but Bowie got a measure of revenge when the puppet unfurled its phallus at the end of the song.) The 1980s were full of promise and peril for both Bowie and Saturday Night Live, but his appearance on this night distilled the best aspects of their 1970s: experimental, provocative, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Date: Dec. 15, 1979 Host: Martin Sheen