Last night's SNL50 Lonely Island medley was genuinely pretty great

Kicking off with Andy Samberg and Lady Gaga on "Dick In A Box," the Lonely Island medley was SNL50: The Homecoming Concert's most energetic offering.

By William Hughes  |  February 15, 2025 | 12:27pm
Screenshot: YouTube
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Last night's SNL50 Lonely Island medley was genuinely pretty great
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If you were one of those rare people not glued to Peacock on a Friday night last night—a weird premise to start with, we know—then you might not have caught all of SNL50: The Homecoming Concert. (And even if you did make the attempt, the opening bit of Jimmy Fallon doing the Blues Brothers, possibly as the terminus of some decades-long experiment to distill the final remaining traces of blackness out of soul music, might have been a stopping point.) As part of Saturday Night Live‘s ongoing tribute to itself, the concert was genuinely stuffed with talent, whether it was the remaining members of Nirvana teaming up with Post Malone for a rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” The B-52s busting out “Love Shack,” or Jack White reprising some White Stripes favorites. Beyond all the celebrity friends, the concert was also a tribute to the show’s own more musical members, with Ana Gastayer and Will Ferrell bringing back square music teachers the Culps, Bill Murray reviving Nick The Lounge Singer, and Tracy Morgan giving us a fresh rendition of the “Astronaut Jones Theme.”

But if there’s one bit you probably heard people talking about after the show last night, it was likely the one embedded just below: A six-minute tribute to top-tier SNL music superstars The Lonely Island that kicked off with Andy Samberg and Lady Gaga unleashing a duet on “Dick In A Box.”

The resulting medley proved to be one of the most energetic (and genuinely funniest) bits of the night, and even if the idea of an SNL self-tribute concert doesn’t sound like your idea of great multi-hour entertainment, it might still be worth checking out. There are, of course, more celebrity cameos: Eddie Vedder, Bad Bunny, and T-Pain all get involved—but we were honestly more excited to see that Chris Parnell still has his “Lazy Sunday” rapping skills. (Also, a “Dear Sister” reference is never not going to get us.) It’s basically a concentration of everything we were hoping to get out of The Homecoming Concert: Funny, weird, and it actually sounded pretty good (even if swapping Michael Bolton out for Vedder for “Jack Sparrow” feels like a bit of a downgrade).

 
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