Tonight marks the return of Saturday Night Live with guest host Tina Fey and musical guest Arcade Fire. The performance for Arcade Fire will be the band’s fourth overall performance as musical guests on the show which is a feat to be proud of. But while playing SNL multiple times these days is an honor, many fans of the show will say the meaning behind being a musical guest has deteriorated over the years.

Whether this be because of the direction of the music industry or because bands used to take more chances back in the day, is seems musical guests used to mean more than they do today. But while there have been thousands of musical guests throughout the decades, only a select few musical guests stick above the rest as representing the cultural power that SNL had had over the years. Not everyone sticks out for good reasons, as we’ll just go ahead and mention Lena Del Rey here because we’ve all had enough damage to our ears done already.

So before tonight’s 39th season kicks off, let’s take a look back at the most memorable musical guests in Saturday Night Live history.

Simon & Garfunkel Share A Tender Moment– October 18, 1975

It was just the second episode ever of Saturday Night Live but right off the bat the musical guests proved to be an important part of the show. With Paul Simon acting as host, his partner and long time frienemy Art Garfunkel dropped by unexpectedly and the duo played an impromptu version of “The Boxer”. Things started out slow but once the dup launched into the vocal part of the song, what we saw was SNL magic and one of the best moments the show has ever had. It established what kind of range the show would go on to have the the culture it would represent. While Chevy Chase and other were being wacky comical anarchists, this tender performance by Simon & Garfunkel went a long way in showing what SNL was really all about.

Sinead O’Connor Rips Up The Pope — October 3, 1992

With Tim Robbins hosting the second episode of the 1992 season for SNL, nobody thought anything could really go that wrong. That was until Irish singer Sinead O’Connor infamously turned the her musical performance into something NBC has censored and refused to repeat since. If you’re a famous singer on a hit television show, you can do just about anything — except tear a photo of The Pope in half. That’s exactly what O’Connor during her set on the show, and her career has almost become defined by that singular moment. As her hit song goes, nothing compares to the moment Sinead O’Connor tanked her career and ripped up a picture of The Pope. Wait, I don’t think those are the exact words.

The Blues Brothers Make a Triumphant Musical Debut — November 18, 1978

It started out as a goofy skit back in the early days of SNL, but John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd turned The Blues Brothers into a cultural phenomenon. THeir first major performance came a few years before the hit movie did, but in 1978 Belushi and Aykroyd took their goofy sketch more seriously than anyone thought they could and turned it into a real band. The Blues Brothers then traveled, as Aylroyd and Belushi, before turning their act into a hit movie that still remains one of the best remembered relics of the 1980s. Belushi died in 1982, ending the run the band had, but SNL was able to spawn one of it’s first spinoff hits out of The Blues Brothers, which lead to all the post-SNL productions we have today — not to mention some damn fine blues music.



Red Hot Chili Peppers Are Too Wasted To Perform — February 22, 1992

This was still a season before Sinead O’Connor ripped up a photo of The Pope, but The Red Hot Chili Peppers beat her to the punch when it came to turning in a truly embarrassing and awful musical performance. The band has had notable struggles with substances abuse, but when they showed up for the Roasanne Barr-Tom Arnold hosted show in 1992, they hit one of the lowest points in their history. Guitarist John Frusciante is so messed up that he can’t even play one of the most recognizable guitar riffs of the 90s correctly and the performance goes down hill from there. It’s a train-wreck to watch and a true stain on the band’s legacy.



Elvis Costello Gets Banned For Changing The Song — December 17, 1977

Saturday Night Live is known for it’s structure, even though some of the best moments come from actors not being able to contain their laughter during a sketch. However, Lorne Michaels was none too pleased with British singer Elvis Costello’s spontaneous nature during his 1977 performance. Costello started playing a hit song from his old record when he abruptly stopped his band, apologized for playing an old song and launched into a song off of his new album. The last minute change — which was unbeknownst to Michaels — ended up getting Costello banned from the show.

Rage Against The Machine Flip The Flag Upside Down — April 13, 1996

Steve Forbes once was a Republican Presidential candidate. Rage Against The Machine hates the establishment and loathes Republicans. So what exactly did the folks at SNL think was going to happen when they asked one of the most radically political bands of all-time to play a show being hosted by a pro-establishment Republican? The band protested, hung the American flag upside down on their equipment, despite telling NBC and SNL that they wouldn’t do it and were kicked out of the building after their first song finished. SNL scrapped the band’s second performance of the night as well as the hand shake and hugging session that ends each show.



Nirvana Introduces Themselves to America — January 11, 1992

Few musical sounds dominated the 90s like grunge music did and no band was more the face of the movement than Nirvana. Hot off the success of their breakthrough album Nevermind which changed the landscape of music forever, the band was finally booked to play SNL during the 1992 season, just months after the release of Nevermind. The band played it mostly straight, as Kurt Cobain didn’t sabotage the show like he was known to do when the band was asked to play pop music venues and shows. But their second set feature of “Territorial Pissings” ended with a staple of Nirvana’s performances, the utter and total destruction of their equipment. Fans of the band had come to love these antics but it was the first time mainstream Americans were truly seeing what Nirvana was all about and the attitude of the band has never faded.



Patti Smith’s Intimate Debut Performance — April 17, 1976

New York City was the epicenter of one of the most potent eras in rock history as the American punk scene was born and bred in basement cellars all over the city. SNL missed a ton of opportunities to get behind both the punk movement and the hip-hop movement of the late 80s before both were mainstream acceptable, but one very notable exception remains Patti Smith playing the show before she became the sensation she was. Like Nirvana introducing themselves to housewives and kids staying up late to watch TV, Smith connected with her audience and her intimate performance of “Gloria” and a brand new era of rock and roll was both born and forcibly accepted by everyone.

Ashlee Simpsons Acts a Fool, Ruins Her Career — October 23, 2004

What’s an SNL musical guest list without mention of Ashlee Simpson? Just when the musical guest aspect of SNL was loosing the luster it once had, Simpson helped beat it’s significance into the ground while still giving it one more memorable moment to cherish. We all now the story, the little sister of Jessica Simpson lip-synced the wrong song then danced around the stage like we were watching some kind of warped hoe-down. But what this moment did was more than just make us laugh, it rendered the musical guest spot nothing more than artists showing up to shamefully plug their own material. Sure, it had always been that way, but three decades of it was clearly enough and the show that made it bones making fun of hilarious situations elsewhere found themselves living their own nightmarish skit.

Pearl Jam Kindly and Loudly Introduces Themselves — April 11, 1992

Let’s not end this list on a down note. While Nirvana is the face of the 90s music scene, Pearl Jam is it’s sound and soul. Aside from the fact that every longhaired wannabe ripped off Eddie Vedder’s vocal sound in the 90s, the Seattle band was everything Nirvana was but in a much more assessable manner. Nothing showed that more than their debut performance on SNL where Vedder lures us in with his shy persona and then pounds you to death with an epic rendition of “Alive”. The video here is just their rehearsal but the actual performance is mind blowingly Pearl Jam in every single way. Nirvana ended their set by smashing their instruments out of angst, but Pearl Jam was much more soulful than that, and their performance showed that the age of 90s music would have many lives but just one soul.