‘SNL’ At 50: The Show’s 50 Best Musical Shorts/ Original Songs, From ‘D–k in a Box’ to ‘More Cowbell’ and ‘King Tut’

Drake’s videos are known for spawning memes, so of course SNL lightly dunked on Drizzy for the dad dancing he did in the viral “Hotline Bling” video. Their solution was filming a nearly identical one in which dads, teachers and tax guys (Beck Bennett, Taran Killam and yes, soon-to-be-president Donald Trump) pull out their lamest moves.

“I know you make fun of my/ I know you, I know you/ I know you make fun of my dance moves/ Turn me into memes and gifs/ But I’m proud of my dance moves/ ‘Cuz lots of people dance like this/ Bet your father dance like me,” Jay Pharoah (as Drake) raps from inside a neon void. It contains a cameo from none other than famously bad dancer Ed Grimley (Martin Short) — and, for better or worse, also features Trump doing a hokey pokey even more cringe than his Village People double-hand jive.

Watch Drake bust out the Sneaky Fish and the Miracle Whip here.

Guest Ludacris is really feeling his “straight genius” main dude Blizzard Man (Samberg), who hops on the mic to put his special sauce on a track in the studio. “Rap song, rap song/ We do our raps and then the crowd goes wild/ And then it’s time for the after party/ And we hang out and do lots of sex with girls,” Blizz raps in the lamest, most hilarious way possible.

Check out Blizz’s hypercolor shirt and Jordache jeans here.

The “D–k in a Box” sequel you never knew you didn’t want. Samberg and Timberlake were back at it in this 2009 oh-no-they-didn’t short about two sensitive sons determined to give each other’s mothers exactly what they need.

“My mom’s been so sad and gray/ My dad can’t satisfy her/ In the bedroom ever since he passed away,” they singer over a slinky R&B beat before coming up with the perfect solution for their sad, unsatisfied moms (Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson) in a song that could totally be a hit if it weren’t so hilariously ick. “‘Cause I’m a Motherlover/ You’re a Motherlover/ We should f–k each other’s mothers/ F-k each other’s moms,” they sweetly sing. “I’ll push in that lady, where you came out as a baby/ Ain’t no doubt this s–t is crazy/ F–king each other’s moms.”

Watch the second best idea they ever had here.

Sure, another Lonely Island short, but this time Andy, Jorma and Akiva brought along ringers Kendrick Lamar and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine to help and a not-that-fun plot twist you never saw coming. With a soaring, fun.-inspired chorus from Levine (“You know that we are still young/ So don’t be dumb/Don’t trust anyone/ ‘Cause you only live once”), this surprisingly helpful rap flips the script with very sensible tips.

“Never go to loud clubs ’cause it’s bad for your ears/ Your friends will all be sorry when they can’t hear/ And stay the hell away from drugs ’cause they not legal/ Then bury all your money in the backyard like a beagle,” Taccone and Samberg rap, while slapping a tray of drugs away from Danny McBride.

K-Dot shows up near the end with bars about avoiding freelancing, making sound investments (have you considered real estate?) and maximizing your savings account.

You oughta look out for this gem here.

When Samberg returned to Studio 8H in November 2024 you knew he’d have a new Lonely Island jam in his pocket. In this case it was a pair of tiny shorts to match musical guest Charli XCX’s suburban pantsuit-wearing mom. In the K-pop-style bit, Andy and Charli dance through their suburban home singing about how much they love snitching on their neighbors.

“Now here I go/ I’m reportin’ you to the cops/ I’m calling the pigs/ On a fellow white,” Samberg croons as Colin Jost gets handcuffed and taken away, with Charli adding, “Now, hold up, wait a minute/ ‘Cause I’m about to snitch like I invented-ed it/ They gonna roll up any minute/ I pay my motherf–kin’ takes, now I’m cashing in on every penny.”

Watch them sleep like babies after sending the neighbor to central booking here.

One of SNL‘s superpowers is helping the nation find the humor in some of our most challenging times. Hence this whispery, 2020 Ying Yang Twins-esque COVID 19-era homage to dating during a pandemic. Heck, all Kenan Thompson, Chris Redd and Pete Davidson want to do is make sure their ladies don’t have a “chin like Leno” or teeny tiny lips.” (Or as guest rapper Chris Rock suggests, “she might have only one big tooth.”)

After their pleas to drop that mask, Ego Nwodim and Megan Thee Stallion hit them with some real talk, with the H-Town rapper snapping, “He don’t care about your health/ He just wanna see you topless/ Pulling up to his crib swallowing his droplets,” as they reciprocate with a digs at the mens’ hairlines and requests for a clean shave to see how those jawlines look.

Watch the guys try to catch corona for the WAP here.

Before she got Wicked, Ariana Grande contributed to this Broadway-style ode to the difficulty of writing the perfect anthem for all women without avoiding the usual clichés or trying to speak for all women. “Every woman has a struggle/ And every struggle’s real/ But just try and write a song/ That captures every woman’s deal/ So instead of writing lyrics/ Here’s us running in the sand,” Cecily Strong and Grande sing on the bop, which makes the social commentary medicine go down smoother thanks to harmonies from Vanessa Bayer, Sasheer Zamata, Leslie Jones, Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon.

They keep tripping over old tropes until they get to the shrinking away chorus: “This is not a feminist song/ So technically, it can’t be wrong/ This is not a feminist song/ I feel like we’ve been singing so long.”

Click here to find out why it was a feminist song all along.

This one was just a layup. With an already established reputation for his signature marble-mouthed delivery, Adam Sandler murdered an impression of Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder’s equally indecipherable delivery on his band’s 1991 sophomore single “Even Flow,” in this urgent plea to Michael Jordan to not quit basketball.

“Eyyy, uh, jamalala, good anuh, please don’t quit Michael… oh yeah!” Sandler grunts from under his Vedder wig. “Whooooa, ayooo, lamanama ebalaba booya, you’re the best dribbler, oh yeah.”

Woo ah! Check it out here.

Yup, yet another Lonely Island joint, this time with a cameo from sleaze cinema legend John Waters, who introduced the trio’s new dance sensation. Dressed as besuited weirdos, they sing, “When you’re out at a club and you see a fly girl/ Do ‘The Creep’/ And do ‘The Creep’/ And if you wanna make friends at the ATM/ Do ‘The Creep’/ And do ‘The Creep.’”

As they instruct on the slow-rolling rap tune: let your hands flop around like a marionette, pop your knees up and down, pull your waistband up, slick you hair down and trim up your pencil mustache. The literal creeps-for-life get a sinister assist from female creeper Nicki Minaj, who raps, “When I was a girl, I creeped in the boys’ locker room/ Hide deep inside it was my little creep stalker room/ As they disrobed, I was oogling and oggling/ Little did they know, that for me, they were modeling/ And I would laugh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, ha.”

Get creepy here.

Onski (Chris Rock) and B Fats (Chris Farley) are sublimely ridiculous as two public access hip-hop superfans weighing in on the pressing issues of the day from the Marcy Projects. While this one didn’t specifically feature songs, Rock’s absurdly long intro for his partner is a sweet homage to the poetry of rap. “Sitting by my side is my main man/ My ace in the hole/ My New Jersey tow/ My Esther Rolle/ My ten foot pole/ My Billy Joel/ My Nat King Cole/ My Dead Sea Scroll” and on and on.

What’s the showsy, showsy, showsy here and a sequel here.

Armisen did it again in this 2010 howler that hits all his high points: his punk rock past and reverence for the bands that inspired him, a nod to the show’s history (Fear’s legendary 1981 hardcore takeover) and a misdirection with a chaotic payoff. Leading a group of sweet dad punks (Bill Hader, Ashton Kutcher, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl) in a reunion of their twentysomething band (Crisis of Conformity) at his daughter’s wedding, the men blast through “Fistfight in the Parking Lot.”

“When Ronald Reagan comes around/ He brings the fascists to your town/ You think it’s cool to be a jock/ But we get beat up by the cops,” Armisen barks as he kicks over tables and smashes bottles to the (un)happy couple’s horror, ending with a stage dive into the three-tiered cake.

Watch Armisen spread some joy-oi-oi-oi here.

One of Fred Armisen’s not-so-secret weapons was his deadly accurate ability to write parody songs that sound so smooth you’d swear they were real. He proved it again with this 2013 tribute to Northampton’s favorite local band: the Blue Jean Committee. With guest Jason Segel providing backup vocals, Armisen croons about a Massachusetts afternoon “hangin’ on a porch drinking cinnamon beer with you,” followed by a run of weirdly specific lyrics about directions to local landmarks that get everyone in the bar enthusiastically bobbing their heads to the soft-rock jam.

Also, there are some Muppets, for no reason. Pour out a savory beer for sweet, sweet Lucia and Old Man Jones here.

This peak-TRL boy band spoof perfectly captured the mania of the *NSYNC/BSB era in the third appearance by the fictional group with the most complicated hair/beard scenarios this side of AJ McLean. As a bonus, Wade (Jimmy Fallon), Peter Tanner (Will Ferrell), Samm (Chris Kattan), Jeph (Chris Parnell) and Sweet T (Horatio Sanz) cede the spotlight for once to let their opening act, No Refund, take center stage.

The boys (actually *NSYNC in fast food uniforms), bust out their debut single, “Super Size It,” singing, “Why don’t you drive through my heart/ Can I take your order/ Look what you get for just one more quarter/ Super size it (hold the pickle),” with more hip thrusting than seemed totally necessary.

Check out this whopper right here.

You knew Lonely Island had to rope their pal Timberlake (as well as model Molly Sims and Sopranos star Jamie-Lynn Sigler) into this 2008 Pet Shop Boys-style British electro-pop jam about getting way excited way too early in the date. That’s it, that’s the joke.

Super juvenile, but also the rapid escalation of instantly triggering incidents (phone calls, songs on the radio, alarm clocks, gentle breezes from an open window, eating grapes) and JT’s gig as a silent convenience store mop-up guy are a comedy explosion.

Watch and just try to contain yourself.

Luther Campbell (Chris Rock) was up to his old dirty tricks in this 1990 sketch that opened with the 2 Live Crew mastermind busting out one of his patented NSFW rhymes at a label party for the group. “Walkin’ down the street, feelin’ like a mess/ I wanna put my head under somebody’s dress/ Now pull down your panties, or should I say drawers/ And give me a present like Santa Claus/ C’mon girl, get on your knees/ And nibble on me like a rat on cheese,” raps Rock as Campbell in his SNL debut.

From the booty bass beat, scantily clad dancers and Atlantic rep Kevin Nealon’s cringe-y mini ponytail, this sketch nails the hysteria (and secret titillation) around 2 Live Crew’s lewd lyrics. The best part? Clueless Atlantic Records accountant Phil Hartman’s super filthy “back end” lyrical suggestion, Mike Myers beat-boxing to his wife’s (Jan Hooks) even filthier backside original verse and guest Kyle McLachlan’s “bite my butt” barrage.

Bust it here.

So many classic SNL musical bits are tied to the holidays, and this December 2013 original song slaps because it’s so totally relatable. With a killer Britney Spears-meets-Pussycat-Dolls track from music producer Eli Brueggemann, Kate McKinnon, Noël Wells, Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer, Nasim Pedrad and, of course, Lil Baby Aidy (Bryant) head home for the holidays with their boyfriends for some bunk bed boinking.

“This is my old christening dress/ And here’s my stack of X-Files on VHS/ Now we’re gonna freak, in my monkey sheets/ That I’ve had since I was a kid/ Let’s do it in my twin bed, twin bed/ Not gonna like it, but it’s the only option… let’s get wild in a bed for a child,” the ladies sing, as their fellas get increasingly freaked out.

If you don’t mind Uncle Ted over there on the trundle bed, click here.

This long-running Saturday TV Funhouse cartoon chronicled the sweaty adventures of super straight superheroes Ace and Gary. The LOL shorts from Triumph the Insult Comic dog joke genius Robert Smigel had it all: triple entendres, daringly revealing costumes and voice work by Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell and Smigel.

It also had a hilarious, 1960s throwback theme song that went something like, “The ambiguously gay duo/ The ambiguously gay duo/ They are taking on evil, come what may/ They are fighting all crimes to save the day/ They’re extremely close in an ambiguous way/ They’re ambiguously gay,” over footage of the men in their anatomically NSFW Duocar and flying through the air in a position best described as… well, just watch it yourself here.

Fred Armisen came to SNL from the world of indie rock, so it’s no surprise that his best bits all involved music. One of the finest was his sly, smirking Prince, who welcomed special guest Beyoncé (Maya Rudolph) for this 2004 sketch to sing their special holiday greeting in character.

“Prince show/ Snow is everywhere/ Deck the halls, y’all/ Snow is in your hair/ It’s Prince’s Christmas show/ Ya got a little snow down there/ Join me under the mistletoe and climb the funky stairs,” they wail/sing in perfect harmony, on a tune that cold have been a Batman soundtrack outtake. Armisen nails Prince’s funk vamp vibe on the song, and his shy talk show host’s insistence on whispering his thoughts into Bey’s ears and always doing the most kick the jokes up another notch.

Watch him make Robert DeNiro climb on a snowmobile and act like he’s having a good time here.

It’s okay to admit you still have no idea what NFTs are/were. This helpful March 2021 parody of Eminem’s 2002 hit “Without Me” sought to break down non-fungible token with help from rapper Jack Harlow and cast members Pete Davidson and Chris Redd. “Two silicon boys were talkin’ outside, talkin’ outside/ Now what the hell’s an NFT/ Apparently cryptocurrency/ Everyone’s making so much money/ Can you please explain what’s an NFT?” Davidson raps while dressed in a superhero costume like the one Marshall wears in his video.

Redd channels The Matrix‘s Morpheus to further explain the celebrity-fueled tokens that were super hot for about a minute, while janitor Harlow breaks it down on the breakdown with some burning bars about the crypto crapshoot.

Find out what the hell an NFT is here.

Frequent host and former writer John Mulaney has created a series of modern classics with his over-the-top musicals about mundane topics, like, for instance, the maniac who insists on buying the spicy tuna roll sitting in a display case at LaGuardia Airport. Cue the Phantom of LaGuardia singing a ode to how the young man (Pete Davidson) will feel after consuming the room temp rolls.

“In dreams it’s haunting you/ That fish you ate/ The expiration date ends in 18,” Kenan Thompson sings while dressed as a Phantom of the Opera-meets-a-goose costume, in the eight-minute homage to Broadway that lovingly nails the absurdly over-the-top nature of musicals where anything is worth a group sing-along.

Come for the rancid fish, but stay for the Auntie Orphan Annie solo, a high-flying Jake Gyllenhaal “Defying Gravity” cameo and a David Byrne pop-in here. While you’re at it, check out some “Diner Lobster” and a “Bodega Bathroom.”

Maya Rudolph and Ana Gasteyer nail the look, vibe and jittery energy of the late-1990s peak MTV pop era in this sketch, where they play two sassy girl group singers hyping their new single, “Woman Made Man.” Destiny’s Child would never… sing a song about making Frankenstein monster boyfriend Ambrosio (Pierce Brosnan). “A woman made man/ I gave him tenderness and a St. Tropez tan,” they sing in perfect harmony over a banging Darkchild-like beat.

Spoiler, three former members (the actual DC) show up near the end to sing a duet on “Big Ups,” check it out.

The Lonely Island teamed up with belter Michael Bolton for this super-weird homage to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Excited about the “big, sexy hook” he wrote the the trio’s grinding rap track, Bolton joins the crew to croon the massive chorus, “This is the tale of Captain Jack Sparrow/ A pirate so brave on the seven seas/ A mystical quest to the isle of Tortuga/ Raven locks sway on the ocean breeze.”

The boys are… confused, but carry on with their big baller rhyme about throwing stacks in the club, as cinephile Bolton keeps butting in — dressed as Johnny Depp’s Jack, Forrest Gump, Erin Brockovich and, naturally, Scarface.

Let Bolton complete you here.

This classic 2000 bit played off the fascination with VH1’s tale-of-rock-woes series Behind the Music by taking viewers to the big green room in the sky, parodying the series’ predictable bummer narrative beats. With The Doors star Val Kilmer reprising his role as word-slurring singer Jim Morrison, it visited the great beyond, where the tipsy singer forms a new supergroup, The Great Frog Society, with Jimi Hendrix (Jerry Minor), Janis Joplin (Molly Shannon), Keith Moon (Horatio Sanz), Buddy Holly (Jimmy Fallon) and Louis Armstrong (Tracy Morgan).

The ensuing revamp of the Doors’ “Break on Through” has Morrison howling, “Now I broke on through/ But I still have a question for you/ Now we’re on the other side/ What do we do, now that we’ve died?/ Not this side, the other side/ Not this side, the adjacent side.”

Watch record producer (and son of God) Jesus (Will Ferrell) brag about his big find here.

Who better to take on the then-roiling #MeToo movement fall-out than SNL musical sharpshooters Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Leslie Jones, Cecily Strong, Melissa Villaseñor and host Saoirse Ronan? In this December 2017 bit, the women coyly talk about how a string of big, strong men have turned out to be… “habitual predators” as they drop the secret knowledge that “this been the damn world.”

From there they give a bouncy tour of their hometown, sweetly singing, “Welcome to hell/ Now we’re all in here/ Look around, isn’t it nice/ It’s a full nightmare/ Ain’t it so cool, playing this guess who/ Yeah it’s a lot, but it’s what we got/ Welcome to hell!” Cue them bragging about the cute pink guns their dads gifted them, going to your car with keys splayed like Wolverine’s claws and surviving a walk through a “maze all full of boners.”

Check off the list of things ruined for them (including parking, walking, drinking and vans) here.

For further proof that the holidays are always a good source of parody material, look no further than this Thanksgiving 2014 rap featuring Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Sasheer Zamata, Vanessa Bayer, Leslie Jones, Cameron Diaz and Lil’ Baby Aidy (Bryant). Home for the holidays, the women boss up during their annual four-day return, treating their parents like the hired help, flossing about their framed 2nd grade doodles and doing a whole load of laundry “for just one sock.”

“Cuz I’m a back home baller/ If I want somethin’ I just holler/ I do what I want and I get what I want cuz my parents miss their daughter,” they rap on the chart-ready, horn-spiked chorus that could easily have been lifted from a Ludacris jam.

Ball out in the burbs with the crew here.

The best SNL song parodies take something that is already patently absurd and blow it up x100. Hence this 2009 Lonely Island hip-hop banger featuring T-Pain on the Auto-Tuned chorus (“I’m on a boat/ I’m on a boat/ Everybody look at me, ’cause I’m sailing on a boat”) of a tune about what it feels like to, well, floss on a big-ass boat.

So grab your swim trunks, pashmina afghan and flippy-floppies and check it out here.

Though the audience doesn’t always know it, sometimes SNL stars bring their pre-existing characters and bits to the show, where they flesh them out. This 1986 sketch starred Dana Carvey as starving-for-a-hit British crooner Derek Stevens sweating a meeting with a pair of record executives (Phil Hartman and Sigourney Weaver), at which he’s forgotten his promised demo

A spoof of maudlin 1980s power pop ballads (which was based on a bit Carvey did in his audition for the show), it found Stevens sweatily turning the nonsense lyrics of “The Lady I Know” into a turgid, quotable banger some of us (guilty as charged) still sing way too enthusiastically three decades on. “There’s a lady I know/ If I didn’t know her/ She’d be the la…..dy I didn’t know,” he sings tentatively at the piano before going full gonzo.

“And my lady she went downtown/ She bought some broccoli / She brought it home/ She’s chop’in broccoli/ Chop’in brocco-li/ Chop’in brocco-la/ Chop’in brocco-laa-aa,” he sings with increasingly manic energy.

Watch Stevens bloody score with his new hit here.

Over the past four years, the Please Don’t Destroy boys (Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy) have capably taken over the viral music video mantle from Lonely Island. Among their early slam dunks is this Nov. 2021 team-up with Pete Davidson, in which he pitches a parody song where they play his best pals. Budding superstar Davidson starts out rapping about his A-list life and famous friends… except for the title’s three sad virgins, who, he notes, lack swag and are “tall and weird and sad.”

Davidson assures them it’s all in good fun, despite the trio’s repeated protestations about being labeled as lame and embarrassingly bringing one of their actual doctors into the bit. Things reach an AA-list apex when Taylor Swift drops the punishing bridge, singing, “Ben is like a sad Ron Weasley/ It looks like if Big Bird lost all his feathers/ And Martin has the charm and the sex appeal of a scarecrow.”

Watch Pete rap about three sad virgins on Dune here.

Frequent collaborators Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon were so in-the-pocket as nasally singing Bee Gees siblings Barry (Fallon) and brother Robin (JT) Gibb, down to the white suits and flowing 1970s disco hair. But it’s their catchy Barry Gibb Talk Show theme song that wins the day. “Talkin’ it up/ On the Barry Gibb talk show/ Talkin’ ‘about issues/ Talkin’ ’bout real important issues,” they emoted, while busting out their best 2001 Odyssey dance moves.

The lunacy continued as Fallon asked questions in Barry’s hiccuping accented voice, randomly singing guests names for reason whatsoever (“Cruz Bustamante/ Talkin’ ’bout Cruz Bustamante!”)

Watch the brothers work it out here.

The key to a great SNL song parody is to heighten the ridiculousness of the original for comedic effect. But when your starting point is the Insane Clown Posse’s bananas promo videos for their annual Gathering of the Juggalos festival, it’s hard to find a new top (or bottom).

Enter Ass Dan (Bobby Moynihan) and Thrilla Killa Klown (Ryan Phillippe), dropping their 2010 jam about life’s great mysteries (“Where does the sun hide at night?,” “Did people really used to live in black and white?,” “Who is Brazil?,” “Why are pants different than shirts?”) in a so-close-it-almost-seems-real spoof of ICP’s equally inane 2009 “magnets, how do they work?” viral track “Miracles.”

Killa Klown jams, how do they work? Like this (song starts at 0:42 second mark).

In the early SNL years, bizarro stand-up Kaufman was a regular, confounding presence. In this October 1975 bit from the show’s first season, Kaufman busted out his Foreign Man character, who flopped with his terrible-on-purpose Archie Bunker impersonation and not-at-all funny jokes. But after a series of awkward silences and attempts to never return, Kaufman manages to save the day via a heaving crying jag that turns into a primal, honking drum jam that turns the crowd around.

Watch the cringe here (singing begins at 5:20 mark) and check out his equally confusingly perfect “Mighty Mouse” sketch here.

OG cast member Gilda Radner was absolutely on fire in this 1979 parody of all-star musical fundraisers as super wasted Patti Smith-like punk rager Candy Slice. “Gimme Mick, gimme Mick/ Baby’s hair, bulgin’ eyes, lips so thick/ Are you woman, are you man/ I’m your biggest funked-up fan/ So rock me and roll me/ ‘Til I’m sick,” Radner caterwauled about her rock star crush, Mick Jagger, after being, literally, dragged onto the stage in a shambolic state.

In the best SNL musical tradition, this bit slaps because the song is an on-the-nose banger, and because Radner’s white t-shirt-wearing Slice is such a loving/pinpoint parody.

Rock and roll with Candy here.

The premise is simple: marble-mouthed Sandler is a classical opera singer who delivers headlines on “Weekend Update” in full voice while wearing a Dracula-like cape and page-boy wig, no matter how silly the news. The recurring character had the Pavarotti-esque singer waving a white handkerchief and commenting on that week’s breaking stories in broken Italian, such as the news about future President Trump’s second future ex-wife (“Marla Maples con bambino/ The Donaldo es el daddoh/ She demanda huge pre nup-oh/ Marla’s got him by gonaddoh!”)

Watch Opera Man sing his asinine arias here (and check out his return 24 years later here).

Yup, another Lonely Island jam. Members Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone were joined by singer Akon on this bangin’ hip-hop ode to how good it feels to really have sex with an actual woman, seriously. In this case, with the 30-second mens’ clearly unsatisfied partners, Blake Lively and Jessica Alba.

“Have you ever had sex? I have, it felt great/ It felt so good when I did it with my penis/ A girl let me do it, it literally just happened/ Having sex can make a nice man out the meanest/ Never guess where I just came from, I had sex,” Samberg raps before Akon croons, “I just had sex/ And it felt sooo good/ A woman let me put my penis inside of her/ I wanna tell the world.”

It doesn’t matter if you cried the whole time or she put a bag on your head, you’ll love it too.

Lonely Island hit a home run again in 2009 with this brilliant bit matching Rihanna with brace-face redhead Shy Ronnie (Andy Samberg). On a silky R&B track that could have easily been an actual RihRih single, she sang, “Rihanna and Shy Ronnie/ We’re like fire and ice/ Taking over the whole world/ From the mountaintops/ Down to the boys and girls,” to a room full of school kids, for some reason.

Painfully awkward collaborator Shy Ron then busted into his verse in the quietest voice possible, prompting Rihanna to repeatedly urge him to “speak up” and move the mic to avoid feedback (“this beat cost a lot of money”), before he goes buck wild, in full voice, as soon as she leaves the room.

Don’t be shy, check it out here, or check out the bashful bank robber sequel, “Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie & Clyde” here.

Like Sandler’s “Chanukkah Song,” this holiday classic is a modern antidote to all the usual Christmas radio schmaltz. Co-written by Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz, the ditty debuted on the Dec. 9, 2000 episode, where a modern yuletide jam (and tradition) was born. With Sanz picking out the insistent melody on a tiny backpacker guitar and Fallon playing pre-recorded beats on an old school keyboard — while Tracy Morgan and Chris Kattan bop their heads along to the undeniable beat — they sing: “I don’t care what your momma says/ Christmas time in near/ I don’t care what your daddy says/ Christmas time is here.”

Check out a 12-minute supercut — and try not to sing it in your head all day — here.

During his first hosting gig in December 2020, future A Complete Unknown star Timothée Chalamet proved his musical bonafides in one of the most bizarre sketches of that year. After his dad shared the upsetting news that he has to sell the family farm, Chalamet crooned an ode to his pocket-sized pal.

“‘Cause today/ I’m losing my friend/ Yes today/ I’m gonna lose my only friend/ There he is
My tiny horse/ And he’s going away, yeah/ They’re taking him away from me, yeah,” he sang sweetly. What did it mean? Who knows? What’s for sure is that Timmy fully commits to the bit in which Tiny Horse goes on to marry AOC and appear on the Tonight Show.

Watch Chalamet shoo his miniature mount away here.

Bill Murray’s smarmy Nick the Lounge Singer character reached his peak in season 3, when he busted out his original take on the Star Wars theme song in the Powder Room on Meatloaf Mountain. With band leader Paul Shaffer tickling the ivories behind him, Nick — dressed in an unzipped silver vest and black ski pants — cycled through cheesy versions of some of the day’s chart hits before going intergalactic with his ode to Luke, Han and the rest of the “nutty” gang.

“Star Wars!/ Nothing but Star Wars/ Give me those Star Wars/ Don’t let them end/ Star Wars/ If they should bar wars/ Please let these Star Wars… stay,” he crooned on the chorus of the song (which I still sing every time I see the movie’s title).

Watch Nick sing about Star Wars near and far here (song begins at 5:50 mark).

The sweetest sweet spot for a classic SNL musical parody is when it comments on a social trend/meme via a song so dumb (or in the words of the Lonely Island, Incredibad) that you find yourself unable to stop mindlessly humming or singing the lyrics the next day. Cue up Kate McKinnon, Melissa Villaseñor, Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman singing about their favorite past time: watching the most disturbing homicide reality shows while sitting on toilet and talking to their moms.

“Murder show, murder show/ I’m gonna watch a murder show/ YouTube, Hulu, that’s my favorite thing to do/ Two sisters got killed on a cruise in the Bahamas/ I’m gonna half watch it while I fold my pajamas/ Severed limbs found on a beach in Chula Vista/ But I just stare while I eat a piece of pizza,” they sing before guest Nick Jonas hips them to the even more disturbing genre of cult shows.

Watch them murder the beat here.

The Lonely Island stuck again in this braggadocious season 34 (2009) banger that ended up on the trio’s debut studio album, Incredibad. A sniper-perfect parody of Rick Ross’ “Like a Boss,” it finds business nerd Andy Samberg describing his super-important boss-like duties — and slow descent into madness — to guest Seth Rogen over a Rozay-worthy beat.

They include: “Promote Synergy (like a boss)/ Hit on Debra (like a boss)/ Get rejected (like a boss)/ Swallow sadness (like a boss)/ Send some faxes (like a boss)/ Call a sex line (like a boss)/ Cry deeply (like a boss).”

Get “Boss”ed up here.

Slim Shady made a surprise cameo in this December 2020 bit as himself in a killer parody of his 2000 song “Stan.” Pete Davidson plays Santa-obsessed Stu, who writes multiple, increasingly unhinged letters to the North Pole in search of a Playstation 5. Like Shady, Stu’s missives get more disturbing as they go on. “Dear Santa, I notice you never wrote me a letter back/ That’s fine, dog, except really I think that’s kind of wack/ If you can’t help your biggest fan, then you should just retire/ Or next time you slide down my chimney, I’ll set your ass on fire,” bleach blonde Stu raps from his murder basement, causing serious concern among the elves. Plus, it features killer cameos from Kate McKinnon as Dido and Bowen Yang as Elton John.

Watch Santa ruin Stu’s last Christmas here.

Although I wanted to include Eddie Murphy’s killer reggae jam “Kill the White People” sketch in which the versatile singer/comedian performed an upbeat-sounding island groove about race war in an all-white VFW hall, I couldn’t very well ignore the time he out-Stevie Wondered Stevie Wonder. In season 7 (1982), Murphy pulled out his eerily accurate Wonder impression alongside frequent foil Joe Piscopo’s tetchy Frank Sinatra, in a bit in which the Chairman tried to get hip with the kids by recording a version of the song Stevie did “with that Beatle kid [Paul McCartney]… the one that looks like a broad?”

Murphy’s run through Wonder and McCartney’s “Ebony and Ivory” — which Sinatra wants to switch up to “Chocolate and Vanilla” or “Life Is an Eskimo Pie, Why Don’t We Take a Bite?” — is remarkably on point. But when they sit down to get to business, Frank has his own new, terrible lyrics. “You are Black, I am white/ Life’s an Eskimo Pie, let’s take a bite/ That was groovy thinkin’, Lincoln, when you set them freeee!” he croons cluelessly.

It gets better/worse/more hilarious from there. Check it out.

The ne plus ultra of Garth and Wayne’s existence was that time when the members of Aerosmith popped into the pair’s suburban home to jam with the duo on their public access show’s theme song. With Garth’s (Dana Carvey) cousin Barry (Tom Hanks) serving as an overly enthusiastic roadie, Wayne (Mike Myers) and his skittish, trying-not-to-hurl-in-excitement pal try to keep their lunch down as their rock n’ roll heroes shouted out those iconic lyrics: “Wayne’s world/ Wayne’s world, it’s party time, excellent/ Wayne’s world, it’s party time, excellent.”

Watch the excellence (song begins at 7:50 mark) here.

In yet another testament to the laser (cat)-focused excellence of the Lonely Island crew, we give you their second viral sensation, 2006’s “Natalie’s Rap.” This one slapped both because of the Harvard-educated, Oscar-winning actress’ total commitment to the bit, as well as her shockingly on-point rhyme skills.

The set-up was simple: milquetoast cast member Chris Parnell plays a boring interviewer, asking (seemingly) prim and proper Portman what a day in her life is like. Cue all hell breaking loose. “I don’t sleep motherf–ker off that yak and Durban/ Doin’ one twenty, gettin’ head while I’m swervin’/ Damn Natalie, you a crazy chick/ Yo, shut the f–k up, and suck my d–k,” Portman spits with authority, as she offers up her faded prescription for Ivy league success: smoke weed every day, cheat on every test and snort “all the ‘yay.”

No notes, check it here.

Steve Martin was never an official cast member, but was always a good friend of the program — and in April 1978, he played a preview of a new song he’d written honoring Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun in the midst of the two-year U.S. tour of the wildly popular “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit (saw it as a kid). The resulting song, “King Tut,” was an absurdist pop ditty delivered by dead-pan stand-up Martin while wearing a Tut-like outfit, even as he decried the crass commercialization of the Egyptian monarch.

Backed by the 10-piece Toot Uncommons band in Tut-y regalia (in reality the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), Martin struck silly arms-at-90-degree-angle poses as he honked the lines, “Now when he was a young man/ He never thought he’d see/ People stand in line to see the boy king/ (King Tut) How’d you get so funky?/ (Funky Tut) Did you do the monkey?/ Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia (King Tut)” over the marching, blues-y rhythm.

The single (I owned it) hit No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was included on Martin’s hit A Wild and Crazy Guy album. Check out Martin’s homage to his “golden idol” here.

In his short run (1980-1984) on SNL, Eddie Murphy is credited with almost single-handedly keeping the foundering-at-the-time show on the air after the departure of the original cast, thanks to such indelible characters as the foul-mouthed Mr. Robinson, benevolent pimp Velvet Jones, a Catskills-worthy, wisecracking Gumby and his take on the Little Rascals‘ Buckwheat.

But it was sometimes-singer Murphy’s dead-on turn as Soul Brother Number One in 1983’s “James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub” sketch that provided one of the soon-to-be movie superstar’s most iconic SNL music moments. Murphy hot-steps his way out from behind a curtain as a JB’s-like band plays a funk vamp and Murphy perfectly nails Brown’s urgent soul grunt on the line, “Sometimes it make me break out in a cold sweat.”

The band then slides into a Brown groove as Murphy sings perfectly nonsense lyrics about the tub (“Hot tub! Ha! Da!/ Full of water!/ I say hot tub, ha!/ Day! Ba! Very, very hot… very hot! Da!”) so convincingly it sounds like it could have been a forgotten Brown b-side. In a testament to his star power, the rest of the sketch draws howls from the studio audience as a gold briefs-wearing, yelping Murphy dips his toes into the too-hot water before settling in, minus any promised celebrities.

Take a dip here.

It’s one thing to score a pop culture catch phrase. But it’s a whole other thing to write a sketch that becomes an annual tradition. After noticing a lack of cool songs celebrating Hanukkah, Adam Sandler took to the Weekend Update desk to bust out his homage to all the people who you might not have realized get lit during the Festival of Lights.

“Put on your yarmulke/ Here comes Hanukkah/ So much funikkah, to celebrate Hanukkah,” Sandler sings in his warbly voice over acoustic guitar as he laments being the only kid in town without a Christmas tree. Hence, his musical list of “people who are Jewish, just like you and me.” That roster includes some rockers (David Lee Roth, Bowser from Sha Na Na), actors (James Caan, Kirk Douglas, Dinah Shore, Henry Winkler, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy) and, of course, Jesus.

Find out who’s a real fine Jew here.

The Lonely Island’s first digital short to blow up dropped in December 2005 and basically invented the idea of a viral video on the then-new YouTube. The premise of the Beastie Boys-esque rap tune is simple: Andy Samberg and fellow cast member Chris Parnell are bored on a weekend and decide to go see the new Chronicles of Narnia movie.

Much back-and-forth ensues in the super lo-fi clip about the excellent cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery, Samberg’s love of Ryan Gosling and debate over which map app is the best. It comes to a head with the men getting super-amped on the earworm chorus: “The Chronic (what?) -cles of Narnia!” Not only did the sketch help boost SNL‘s sagging ratings at the time, while launching Samberg into stardom, it is also credited with nearly doubling the then-five-months-old YouTube’s traffic.

Sit back relax and click here to be taken to a “dream world of magic.”

As if further proof was needed that this April 2000 bit is one of the all-timers, in the recent four-part SNL behind-the-scenes series on Peacock, an entire episode was devoted to dissecting this bizarre (and apparently apocryphal) tale of how Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” got its signature percussive swing. Based on scene-stealing star Will Ferrell’s lifelong fascination with the 1976 rock classic, it finds then cast members Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell, Chris Kattan and Horatio Sanz playing members of the group who grow increasingly annoyed by Ferrell’s insanely loud cowbell thumping.

Their annoyance is only heightened by a series of insistent pleas from producer Bruce Dickinson (Christopher Walken) — in full Walken mode — continually suggesting that the song needs, yes, “more cowbell.” The insanity ends with a Walken catchphrase that has become a pop culture touchstone: “I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!.” The sketch is so iconic that “more cowbell” has been entered into the Cambridge Dictionary, defined as “an extra quality that will make something or someone better.”

Watch it here.

One of the hallmarks of SNL from its very first season were the instant-classic catchphrases, from “You look mahvelous!,” to “Two wild and crazy guys,” “What’s up with that?” and, of course, “I’ve got a fever.. and the only prescription is more cowbell!” (more on that one later). But the original song that has become an all-time pop parody classic, and the only choice for No. 1 on this list (and in our hearts) is this 2006 present-you-didn’t-ask-for Christmas parody banger co-written by frequent guest Justin Timberlake and the Lonely Island.

From the dead-on 1990s new jack swing loverman vibe (and overly complicated facial hair), to the Jodeci-worthy coordinated dance moves, the Creative Arts Emmy Award-winning song is the gold standard of clever, hilarious lyrics, high quality musical production and just peak silly. “Wanna get you somethin’ from the heart/ Somethin’ special girl/ It’s my d–k in a box/ My d–k in a box, babe,” Timberlake and Samberg sing in the video that has more than 17 million views to date.

Check it out here.