Lady Gaga Delights as Host and Musical Guest on This Week’s SNL
Photo by: Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images
Lady Gaga’s latest album Mayhem has dropped, which our own Stef Rubino says is “a celebration of her past, a reflection of her present, and a small glimpse into what we might see more of from her in the future.”
To coincide with this album drop, Lady Gaga was the host and musical guest on this weekend’s SNL. It was full of good-natured jabs at her own career; in her monologue she talked about winning a Razzie for The Joker 2 (and how she doesn’t care because she likes winning things and wants an EGORT.) I did check to see if this was creative license or legit, and that movie sure did win “Worst Prequel, Sequel, Remake or Rip Off” and “Worst Screen Combo.” She also talked about being a 38-year-old pop star and her questionable choice of past SNL duet performances.
Throughout the show, it was clear the writers had two goals for this week’s episode: 1) have Lady Gaga sing as often as possible, 2) make sure Bowen Yang gets plenty of facetime with one of his favorite divas. There was a sketch where Gaga plays the classmate of a literal mouse and sings him a motivational song that people are unironically loving. There was a sketch where Lady Gaga and Bowen Yang play a couple on a terrible first date where they sing a twisted and chaotic parody of Eric Clapton’s song Wonderful Tonight. At one point Lady Gaga’s character asks Bowen Yang’s if he’s a “fly by night” guy and he says, “Well I’m fly and bi,” and she responds, “Who isn’t these days!”
There were also sketches where Lady Gaga starred as a funeral home employee pitching the idea of a Roaring 20s themed funeral (sold), a Friendly’s sketch where demons are summoned after someone lies about their birthday (fun for me as both a Massachusetts native AND someone who does fear the consequences of lying about something like that), a Loreal commercial for mascara that runs on purpose, and an infomercial for those little red glasses all the “quirky” boomers wear. And while Lady Gaga wasn’t on the Weekend Update segment, Lord Gaga was, who referenced a lot of her song titles and hilariously roasted Colin Jost about how much more money his wife makes than him.
The final sketch of the show was set at brunch in NYC, where Bowen Yang and Lady Gaga’s characters sing about how they need their friends to stop using oversaturated slang words like “slay,” “flex,” and “mother.” (Which is ironic because a lot of people do call Lady Gaga “mother.”) They end the song singing, “we stole words from other people and we’re giving them back today.”
I don’t watch a lot of SNL anymore, but I’m glad I tuned in for this one, because Lady Gaga…well, she slayed.
Abracadabra, More News Has Appeared
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+ Doechii is Billboard’s Woman of the Year for 2025
+ The trailer for the axed Powerpuff Girls live-action remake was leaked starring queer actors Dove Cameron and Yana Perrault, and the love of my life Chloe Bennet; I think this show would have been fun as hell and all you haters can go fly a kite
+ Billie Eilish will be one of the performers at this year’s iHeartRadio Music Awards
+ Rebecca Black will be joining Katy Perry on tour, and I personally would rather Rebecca go on tour herself but whatever works for our queer queen
+ Cardi B is excited for the upcoming final season of #YouOnNetflix and I can’t believe nobody told me Charlotte Ritchie from Mae Martin’s Feel Good is on this show now
+ The Wiggles are apparently LGBTQ+ allies, singing a song called Friends of Dorothy
+ Madonna is sick of the anti-trans rhetoric
+ Kai Schreiber, Naomi Watts’ trans daughter, has made her runway debut at Paris Fashion Week
