Filthy Music Videos

SNL: Ariana Grande Hosts, Stevie Nicks Performs, “Oasis” Visit Weekend Update

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With one musical icon booked as musical guest in Stevie Nicks, another signed on as host in Ariana Grande (there to promote the Wicked movie), and several musical artists in the news, it was an eventful Saturday Night Live on the musical side.

Hosting for the third time, Grande sang in many of her sketches, starting with her monologue, which evolved into an original showtune featuring short impressions of Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, and Gwen Stefani. Grande played the first castrato in a Renaissance (not Renaissance) sketch, with her parents played by Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg, who returned as Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff for the Family Feud parody cold open. She also played the sister of a bride (Chloe Fineman) singing off-key with other bridesmaids (Sarah Sherman, Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner) about a bachelorette party, to the tune of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”

In one of the funniest bits of the night, Grande played Celine Dion singing about UFC in a parody of Dion’s recent Sunday Night Football promo. Her impression was just about perfect. She sang a song about “the smell of my best friend’s house” in pre-taped short with a twist two minutes in. Continuing her tradition of Jennifer Coolidge impressions, she played one of several Jennifer Coolidges (alongside Chloe Fineman and SNL alum Dana Carvey) in a Maybelline commercial parody. She played a competitive mom in a charades sketch and made out with her son’s (Michael Longfellow) boyfriend (Bowen Yang) at the end. And she played a hotel detective of other hotel detectives in an old-timey Twilight Zone parody.

As for the actual musical guest: Nicks, returning to the SNL stage for the first time in 41 years, performed her new single “The Lighthouse” and the classic “Edge Of Seventeen.” Grande joked about duetting with Nicks during the number, but alas, that did not happen.

One more music thing: James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman played Oasis’ Noel and Liam Gallagher on Weekend Update, but they could never be as funny as the actual Gallagher brothers.

Liam didn’t like it, and Sherman and Johnson commented on Stereogum’s Instagram post of his review.