But his rapid-fire, pitch-corrected vocals were bound to translate poorly to the SNL stage, where even the strongest and clearest vocals can get buried. Lil Baby, " California Breeze " and " Forever " (1/28/23)Ītlanta rapper Lil Baby is a huge, chart-topping star. It's not particularly good, exactly, but at least it's. A full band rocks out, in a meandering sort of way, amid an assortment of greenery as singer Diana Gordon can't help but overshadow her counterpart meanwhile, Yachty himself is left to warble lackadaisically, rap a bit in "drive ME crazy!" and don a massive fur cap while standing around and nodding. That record, Let's Start Here, provides the jumping-off point for this curious and somewhat inscrutable set, in which Yachty himself seems to only intermittently participate. Yachty has been an actor, a rapper, a multimedia sensation and, on the album he released earlier this year, the leader of a psychedelic rock band that leaves hip-hop behind. Lil Yachty has been upending expectations throughout his strange young career, which has found him in everything from a starring role in How High 2 to, um, a collaboration with Donny Osmond on a jingle for Chef Boyardee. But not even the Grammys are foolish enough to place Jack Harlow on par with Kendrick Lamar.ġ6. Harlow at least seemed roused enough to participate in "State Fair," but the arrangement isolated him onstage and forced him to carry the entire burden of the moment - a tactic that works if you're, say, Kendrick Lamar. Way to climb the ladder, J-'low! A medley of "Lil Secret" and "First Class" places Harlow in front of a band, but the songs are dull - has there been a less hook-forward chart-topper than "First Class" in recent years? - and he couldn't help but find himself overshadowed by both the easygoing groove and a doofy white scarf. For Season 48, he returned to the SNL stage to perform double duty as host and musical guest - and soared up the rankings, all the way to 17th (out of 18), due to a writers strike that lopped three episodes off the season. Two years ago, Jack Harlow's drab, listless SNL debut propelled him to a 19th-place performance (out of 20) on this very list. Jack Harlow, "Lil Secret"/"First Class" and "State Fair" (10/29/22) So by the time he, Jacob Collier and the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers paddled back to the sturdy shores of "Fix You," the damage had already been done.ġ7. "The Astronaut" and "Human Heart," two slabs of Up With People-style inspirecore from 2021's Music of the Spheres, just can't be elevated to the heights he's hell-bent on reaching. But he's often guilty of overreaching in the pursuit of transcendence, and that only works when the songcraft is top-notch. Sam Smith in 2015, but also Coldplay on a stage filled with smiling space aliens and swaying congregants.Ĭhris Martin is a talented and charismatic guy, in spite of it all, and his band's Tiny Desk concert from 2020 - also recorded with a choir! - was legitimately wonderful. In fact, if you were to take Sam Smith in 2023 but extinguish every scintilla of sexuality and mischief, you'd get. It's remarkable how many ingredients this set shares with Sam Smith's SNL performance just two weeks earlier most obviously, they both deployed choirs, with costumery to spare. If you want the most compelling possible case against Coldplay, watch this SNL appearance, which is corny enough to drown the earth's surface in ethanol. If you want to hear the most compelling possible case for Coldplay, listen to Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head. Jacob Collier and the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers)" (2/4/23)Ĭoldplay has inspired more than 20 years of fierce online debate, but the argument isn't all that complex. Coldplay, "The Astronaut" and "Human Heart"/"Fix You (feat. So, for the sixth year in a row, let's get to it!ġ8. (See previous rankings: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018.)Īs always, we've linked to every performance that's still (legally) posted on YouTube, but every one of these sets is also available for streaming via Peacock in case you wish to check my work. So it's once again time to cruelly rank them all: the magnificent, the flawed-but-forceful, the forgettable and the truly, epically misbegotten. Naturally, the vagaries of live performance - and of SNL's notoriously unforgiving Studio 8H, not to mention late-night TV's eternal issues with sound mixing - meant that some musical guests were bound to outshine the rest. The results were a typically mixed bag, with occasionally transcendent results. For the second straight season, SNL leaned away from the safe spaces of guitar-driven rock, opting instead to focus more heavily than ever on R&B and (especially) hip-hop. But at least the musical guests offered some major highlights. It was a rough season for Saturday Night Live, which endured painful cast attrition (Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, et al.), mixed reviews and a writers strike that knocked out Season 48's final three episodes.
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