Top 25 Worst SNL Musical Performances

The band that needs no introduction has only performed once on “SNL,” on the night of October 7, 1978. They did three songs - “Shattered,” “Beast of Burden,” and “Respectable.” “Shattered” went off well, but the wheels started coming off with “Beast of Burden.” Mick Jagger tried to add some snap to the show with flamboyant movements and gestures, but they couldn’t mask his horrible voice. We don’t know what happened here, but his singing is ridiculously flat and raspy, like an untrained singer trying to do his best Mick Jagger impersonation. Maybe the cigarette that he is openly smoking on stage has something to do with it…

Fans of “Saturday Night Live” are sort of used to high-energy performances from the show’s storied list of musical guests. After all, if one doesn't want to be there, a dozen other aspiring artists are waiting in the wings for their opportunity. This is partially why this performance from 21 Savage was so depressing. The rapper barely seems awake during his sets, and the lower-tier vibes are clearly on display. We hesitate to use the word "disappointing" here because 21 Savage holds an admittedly low bar, but yeah… this was bad.

It’s an old adage, but also one that rings true. Famous friends can only take a person so far, right? None other than Taylor Swift showed up on the “Saturday Night Live” stage to help introduce her buddy Ice Spice’s performance. This was probably the most memorable thing to report from this night, to be completely honest. There really isn’t a lot to grab onto creatively when it comes to the music of Ice Spice in the first place, but the lackluster sound mix and coquettish choreography didn't do much to elevate things.

The music of Captain Beefheart (both with and without The Magic Band) has been a lot of things over the decades. It’s served as outsider art at its best… and unlistenable trash at its worst. This performance from “Saturday Night Live” might have arguably been both, although you'd probably have been hard-pressed to find any supportive audience reactions at the time. The thunderous silence that occurred when Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band mercifully brought their set to an end was an incredibly awkward “SNL” moment for the ages. Although it possibly wasn't intended as such.

The infamous Kanye West will probably never set foot upon a “Saturday Night Live” stage again, but at least we have these terrible performances by which to remember his Yeezy-ness. West’s public support for current U.S. president Donald Trump had him in hot water with a lot of different people over the years. His appearance alongside Lil Pump on this night was particularly infamous, however. On one hand, the performance was bad and featured some strange costumes. On the other hand, Kanye West also went on a conspiratorial rant after the fact. One which effectively made him persona non grata.

Fans of a certain artist usually expect a performance on the “Saturday Night Live” stage from that artist to, you know… actually highlight that artist. Katy Perry's 2017 gig on “Saturday Night Live” was instead more notable for the antics of her supporting backup dancers than the "California Gurls" singer. It’s meme-worthy, sure. There was certainly glitz and glamour all over the place. That said, there was actually very little in the way of anything that made Katy Perry the focus, and she instead played second and third fiddle to her own show.

Who knows? Maybe there were more far important things going on in the mind of Gunna back when he appeared on the stage of “Saturday Night Live.” Important things like, oh we don't know… maybe the fact that authorities were circling in, and he was about to be arrested on racketeering charges? It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, since Gunna’s performances here weren’t very great, anyway. His sets on “Saturday Night Live” were short and not so sweet. The sort of blink-and-you-miss-it forgettability that basically underlined Gunna’s existence as an artist extraneous to need.

The night of November 27, 1976, saw a number of legends on the “SNL” stage, including host Jodie Foster and musical guest Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame. Wilson was in a bad place at the time. He had recently become a recluse, was suffering from drug and alcohol issues, and his wife was threatening to have him institutionalized. It resulted in a rather bizarre and borderline tragic appearance. Wilson’s voice was clearly strained, and he struggled to hit the notes that his younger and healthier self put on record. His energy was also clearly lacking, and the show ended with a weirdly subdued performance of “Good Vibrations” inside a sandbox.

The novelty of one-time pop duo Karmin definitely seemed to fall off after their appearance on “Saturday Night Live” back in 2012. There’s little that green or unprepared acts can do when faced with that level of intimacy on such a small stage. You either have it or you don’t at that point, and Karmin definitely seemed to falter. Reviews of the day remarked how Karmin felt polished and looked good, but ultimately lacked substance. The performance was criticized as being little more than an attempted career boost for a group whose career probably wasn’t destined for the long haul in the first place.

As of writing, this iconic rock band has appeared twice on the show, once in 1992 and again in 2006. The former was significantly sloppier. The band does what they can, but there’s just no covering John Frusciante’s slipshod and out-of-tune guitar playing. Frusciante was going through some major personal problems - addicted to heroin, hating the fame, and isolating himself from the rest of the band. Just three months after their appearance on “SNL,” Frusciante would quit for the first time. This mini concert represents everything that was troubled within the band, with singer Anthony Kiedis believing that Frusciante intentionally sabotaged the performance just to mess with his friends. Whatever the reason, it was an unmitigated disaster.

2019 was a great year for Michigan rock band Greta Van Fleet, as they broke out with their second EP From the Fires and won the Grammy for Best Rock Album. They were also the musical guests on the night of January 19, playing “Black Smoke Rising” and “You're the One.” The latter performance is now legendary, having been relentlessly mocked and parodied on TikTok. It reeks of the drug-fueled ‘70s, down to the outfits, rock, and roll sharing of the mic, ridiculous gesturing, and the zonked-out looks of the band members. It’s certainly unique, we’ll give it that!

The 1991 biography of actress/singer Marianne Faithfull titled “As Years Go By” contains an interesting recollection of her infamous “SNL” appearance from 1980. Author Mark Hodkinson writes in his book how Faithfull had “gone missing” three hours prior to her “Saturday Night Live” performance. Rehearsals the day prior had apparently gone well, but Faithfull was eventually found intoxicated and under the influence of a dental anesthetic called procaine. The resulting live gig saw Faithfull’s voice completely wrecked, devoid of producing much more than a helpless croak. The “SNL” department did their best to fix the levels, but it was no good: this was a disaster.

It isn’t all too unusual for artists who have made it big on reality shows or talent competitions to try their hand at gaining some “SNL” glory. Italy’s Måneskin did just that, appearing on “Saturday Night Live” after achieving success on both “The X Factor” and the Eurovision Song Contest. And, to be fair, Måneskin did their neo-glam rock schtick with a conviction borne perhaps of a complete lack of self-awareness. It ultimately comes down to whether or not one digs the fact that Måneskin did one of their own tunes, and a cover of The Four Seasons. Was it enough of an introduction to the largely unaware “SNL” audience? Or a cringy performance from a group that should’ve just gone away?

This DJ and rapper closed out the show’s 44th season on the night of May 18, 2019, and he did it in style. He performed five songs through two medlies and honored the late Nipsey Hussle, who was killed shortly before the episode aired. He was also joined by some modern hip-hop and R&B legends, including SZA, Lil Wayne, and fittingly, John Legend. But many fans believed this was a case of style over substance, like DJ Khaled was using his clout to mask his lack of activity. Indeed, DJ Khaled himself didn’t really do anything but bounce around and interject with the odd statement. He’s a hype man who’s awkwardly hanging around and letting his guests do all the actual work.

Few artists represent the early ‘90s quite like MC Hammer. The superstar pulled double duty on December 7, 1991, both hosting the show and performing three songs. Unfortunately, none of them were any good, and weirdly enough, “U Can't Touch This” was completely absent from the setlist. Even worse, two of the three songs - “Addams Groove” and “This Is the Way We Roll” - were made specifically for the “Addams Family” movie. This represented the general shoulder-shrugging nature of the whole ordeal. Hammer’s star was fading, and this obvious advertisement of a show seemed like a last-ditch effort to stay relevant. We love the Addams Family, but come on, when you get MC Hammer, you have to do “U Can't Touch This”!

We know what you might be thinking. “Deion Sanders? The football player? He performed on ‘SNL?’” Indeed. Neon Deion served as a host back in 1995, with Bon Jovi as the musical guest. Yet, Sanders seemed to think this was also an appropriate place to showcase a couple of his own tunes, including one titled, “Must Be the Money.” The end results were about as successful as one might expect from an athlete guest host fresh off of winning the Super Bowl. Sanders was shooting his shot, which we can’t knock. But we bet that you’ve never seen his rap album anywhere other than the cut out bin, right?

When Troye Sivan appeared on “SNL” in 2018, his performance of “My, My, My!” split the room... or at least the Twitterverse. While Sivan won some new fans – or at least reaffirmed some old ones – others were not so kind. Commentary ranged from viewers not knowing or wanting to know who he was, to questioning exactly why he was so damn wet. But these were the kinder comments. Others took his dancing to be a lame attempt at being sexy, others deemed him an “Aaron Carter Wannabe”, and a “dancing & singing lizard boy”. Yikes.

Iggy nailed it here. If you're a fan of her music and brand, you were sure thrilled with her performance. The trouble here is MØ, a Danish singer with a long list of collaborators. This was MØ's first appearance on American TV... and, oh how it shows. From the moment she wanders out, the segment comes off like a scrapped sketch from an unfeatured player working through their two weeks notice. She would later cite microphone latency issues as the source of her troubles, but that hardly explains her off-dancing and sixth grader in a school play stage presence.

Who is Chris Gaines? He's the Australian-born, pre-emo late '90s rockstar of course. Or, in reality, a soul patch-wearing Garth Brooks in a Beatles wig. There's a lot to unravel here. As an artist, “Gaines” did have a Billboard top 5 hit, making him a quasi-worthy guest. In the Gainesverse, however, he was huge. The trouble is while the character had a whole backstory – and was ultimately intended to lead a feature film (that film was never made) – the general public knew none of this, and were instead baffled by this strange game of dress-up from the decade's top country artist.

Think all it takes to be punk is a couple power chords and a Californianized British accent? Oh no, friend, punk is a way of life. At least it was for Fear. Formed by Lee Ving just a few years prior, the band caught the attention of John Belushi, who attempted to get them to soundtrack his film, “Neighbors”, only to see the idea shot down by studio brass. To make it up to them, Belushi petitioned to get them on “SNL,” despite no longer being a cast member. The result? A studio full of “slamdancers”, pumpkin guts, and $20,000 worth of damages.

Formally the Impediments, until the band's drunken rep caught up with them, the Replacements were known to like a song now and again between drinks. They once drunkenly played the worst set ever staged at CBGB, to an audience of talent scouts no less. But in 1986, fortune shone on the 'Mats, when the Pointer Sisters canceled and musical director G.E. Smith invited them to SNL. Rehearsal went well... but the hours before the show were spent getting drunk with host Harry Dean Stanton, and their obvious state, clothes swapping, and an uncleared f-bomb were enough for Lorne Michaels to ban them then and there.

She's reinvented herself since, but in 2010 Kesha arguably set the “SNL” benchmark for awful. There are all kinds of bad floating around here, from her odd stage presence – which many speculated was due to drunkenness – and lame rapping. This was capped by Kesha asking, “does anyone ever stop to think that maybe we are the aliens?” But for “Your Love Is My Drug,” she doubled down on the weird and came out in glow paint. This, aside from being strange to look at, was objectively offensive to indigenous peoples. The singing was arguably a little better, but still incredibly pitchy.

On “SNL” in 2008, while promoting “808s & Heartbreak”, the Louis Vuitton Don launched into “Love Lockdown”, a track thought by many critics to be the highlight of the album, and a departure for West given that it featured him singing. But did it? For style rather than a lack of talent, West's “singing” voice for the song was processed via vocoder – a device that converts and musicalizes the human voice. Live however, this proved incredibly messy, with Kanye’s voice cracking, the vocal effect coming through inconsistently and the backups being cranked up sporadically to cover it.

We've all gotten used to Lana Del Rey, but 2012 was a different time. A few years prior, she was Lizzy Grant, a budding songwriter and up-and-comer. Taking on the name Lana Del Rey, she found her first round of fame in 2011 via YouTube and her star only climbed higher with her second album, “Born to Die”. However, that album was still weeks away when she appeared on “SNL” in January of 2012, an appearance that was instantly hated – perhaps due to a case of too much hype with too little proof and substance, or maybe because it was simply underwhelming.

While it doesn't require as much talent as singing, lip-syncing is also an art. You have to .... well, you have to synchronize your lips to words mostly. But you also have to really sell it, y'know? These, friends, are the basics of lip-syncing. But, it also helps if you're mouthing the right song. On stage for her second song, “Autobiography”, Simpson's disembodied voice began to sing first song “Pieces of Me”, which prompted her band to switch tracks, and her to do a merry jig and bolt. Initially blaming her band, Ashlee later said she opted not to sing live due to her acid reflux.


Is there an “SNL” musical performance that was so bad it felt good? Let us know in the comments!