My Favourite SNL Musical Performances
Yes, there are momentous things happening on the global stage. Yes, we are still recovering from an historic and impactful US Presidential election. But I’m taking a break from fretting about the world. Instead, today I’m simply going to list my favourite musical performances from multiple decades of Saturday Night Live.
Now, my list will differ from yours. My musical tastes are different from yours. But this is my blog, so I get to make the list. Feel free to add your list in the comments. NBC has blocked many of the videos from YouTube, so I’ve had to scrounge to find samples elsewhere…
#3
David Bowie (and Klaus Nomi), 1979
Given how much I worship at the temple of Bowie, you might be surprised to find that I put the Starman at #3 of my list. Yet here he is, alongside the ethereal operatic Klaus Nomi. The third performer, front and centre on stage was Joey Arias, who is not to be confused with convicted murderer Jodi Arias.
This performance seem to make everyone’s top ten list, and for good reason. Bowie is in peak artistic form, and the backing vocals of the celestial Nomi take this version of an eternal classic (“The Man Who Sold The World”) into new stratospheric realms. Bowie’s costume choice would define the remainder of Nomi’s tragic career:
#2
Squeeze, 1982
This was supposed to be Squeeze’s final TV appearance. I don’t know if the band kept that promise. I didn’t know much about Squeeze. I had enjoyed a number of their songs, in particular “Black Coffee In Bed“. But this performance introduced me to other bits of their catalogue, like “Pulling Mussels From a Shell”.
The performance is available at Vimeo.
#1
Gary Numan, 1980
This one shocked me to the core. I was 13 years old at the time, that age when you’re craving for artistic and cultural content to reflect and inform your personal identity. The world around me was jeans, hairspray, big hair, rock’n’roll, or disco. But that was not my personality. I was sci-fi, electronic, and new wavey.
I didn’t know who Gary Numan was. Suddenly, he appeared on SNL and my jaw fell to the floor. This was what I was. This was the sound and aesthetic that appealed to my emerging personality. The next Monday at school, I found like minded friends who were as equally moved by this transformational performance and I knew I had a community.
His performance of “Cars” is available on TikTok, and “Praying to the Aliens” is on Facebook.
@thealmanac77 SNL Gary Numan performing "Cars" (16-02-1980) #snlmusicalguest #garynuman #universalplus ♬ original sound – thealmanac77
Honourable Mention:
The Tragically Hip, 1995
This performance has been discussed in multiple places over the years. Host Dan Aykroyd, who famously hails from Kingston, lobbied for his fellow Kingstonians to be given the platform. At the time, I knew some Hip songs, but not a lot about the band. As a Canadian, I was excited to see them exposed to the world, though.
But then they chose what I thought was an obscure song, “Grace, Too” to open up. I mean, they had some more accessible hits that an American audience would appreciate. Weirdly, singer Gord Downie opened with the lyrics, “He said I’m tragically hip” instead of “He said I’m fabulously rich.” And he had a weird smirk during the entire performance.
I would learn muuuuch later than the band were stoned out of their gourds the whole time, which explained a lot.
It wasn’t the breakthrough moment I had hoped for them, the one that would catapult them to global fame. But instead it solidified them as a purely Canadian product who cared more about the sanctity of their songs than about achieving any level of international fame or riches.
The performance is available on Reddit.