Perhaps you've heard that Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

They've mentioned it once or twice.

From Lazy Sunday to Domingo to a ton of iconic musical performances,

S&L has had a long and fascinating relationship with music.

I'm Stephen Thompson, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about some

of our favorite S&L musical moments.

Joining me today is NPR's TV critic Eric Diggins.

Hey, Eric.

I got a fever, and the prescription is more talk

about SNL. Oh, that's my, that was uncanny. Thank you. Thank you. Mike Christopher Walker. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm here all week. The fact that you had to say, my Christopher

Walken tells me it might not have been quite as spot on as intended, but I thought it was fantastic.

All right. Well, Saturday Night Live has always made a big deal out of its anniversaries,

so its 50th was bound to be a spectacle. The milestone has already spawned TV specials,

as well as Quest Love's movie-length documentary titled Ladies and Gentlemen 50 Years of S&L Music.

I'm kind of cynical about this sort of branded documentary, and I was completely hooked on this movie within the first 30 seconds.

Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Saturday. It's fantastic. You can stream it on Peacock. Now, Eric, you've been watching S&L for decades. You've written extensively about the show. S&L incorporates music in a bunch of different ways,

and I wanted to start with one of the ways it's been able to stay relevant in recent years,

which is pre-recorded sketches like Lazy Sunday and Dick in a Box. Why have those worked so

well over the years? Because I think one of the things that S&L had to do to kind of stay current with current pop culture in the music realm is satirized music videos.

And so what Lazy Sunday does is kind of satirized music videos, but it also kind of satirizes the sort of pseudo hip hop culture that has kind of inundated pop music.

And so it's not necessarily satirizing actual hip hop culture,

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