Pajiba

You Can Do Anything was amazing even if it wasn't really funny.

the first time i heard taylor swift live it was MUCH worse. trust.

After ignoring the hype forever, I finally decided that I like Video Games (months after everyone else) just the other day and put it on my ipod. However that performance was awful. She seems drunk and has strange Lohan like lips.

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Goes with the rest of my week.

So it's like a Florence and the Machine-rip off about video games? What the fuck? I'm just so confused.

Dustin, I am sorry to inform you that Lana Del Ray is the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra" and she sang those songs exactly as written in her stage persona. She was a little nervous, but that's as good as she'd sound off of a recording. She's as fake as any other pop starlet and requires copious autotune and smoke and mirrors to sound halfway decent.

Yeah you can tell she gets super nervous performing live. There's one on youtube here:
http://youtu.be/VTDlV9A2nnY where its live but not in front of an audience and she seems to do much better. She tried to release an album before under her given name (lizzy grant) and it tanked - so producers and lawyers helped her create the image of Lana Del Rey (which she openly admits to in interviews) she wanted to be a band but got pushed into a solo artist career instead and it definitely shows how shaky she is on her own. too bad cause she writes her own stuff and I love the throwback style of sixties and seventies torch songs. nice voice, poor presentation.

Also, was anyone else as startled as I was by the "Jay Pharaoh Show" sketch, where Jay disinterestedly ran through his roster of impressions (Chris Rock, Will Smith etc.) while distracted and bored out of his skull? It's as if the writers have admitted they can't do anything with Jay on SNL. After the impressions, what else does he really bring to the table?

BTW, check out recorded versions if "Video Games." She's way better when she's not terrified.

It's a shame that Lana Del Rey's nerves got the best of her, because her music is truly gorgeous on its own. I can imagine the pressure of being thrown into the spotlight so soon into a musicians' career, and SNL is definitely a big deal, so maybe it would have been a better performance if she was more established and had a) her album out for a while and b) more time to perfect herself as a performer so she would not get so nervous. As I said, I really like her, and hope this does not affect her image too much.

Heard her for the first time randomly yesterday morning on XM. Then in the afternoon I am offered a free song of hers on ITunes. the, boom. There she is on SNL.

that is quite. P.R. Machine.

Checked her out on you tube, etc and was impressed with the vocals which came across as anti-auto tune.

She is also very, very pretty. Looks like the beauties of the 60's. Better model than performer, though.

She doesnt have the voice or talent of Adele, but few do. And Adele is also terrified of performing. I think people are less apt to give this new gal a break because of her looks.

Thank Godtopus. The mister and I wondered if there was something we weren't getting about that chick. Whether or not she was nervous, that was some horrifyingly awful stuff. Luckily, she seems so enamored with herself that she doesn't notice.

Lana Del Rey fit in perfectly with a show so poorly written I wonder how the writing staff keeps their jobs. My regrets to Daniel Radcliff. He had to host that mess!

While you were watching this dreck, Arcade Fire was on "Austin City Limits."

I think I win.

I left the room before the Lana's first song came up, and came back in the middle of it. For a few seconds, it definitely seemed like a bad skit... And I agree with you, spoobnooble, the Jay Pharaoh Show bit was embarrassing. Possibly the laziest thing I've ever seen on SNL. I hope Daniel Radcliffe comes back when they have some better writing.

No comment on Lana Del Rey in particular, but boy oh boy, I will be ever so happy when Adele is no longer referred to as the paragon of talent and lovely voices.

Also THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwLsR8Zppvk

My favorite was Bill Hader doing Professor Snape

Seriously wish this thread had simply gone in the direction of surprisingly shitty vocal performances. So, let me add this one:

John Travolta - Never Gonna Fall In Love Again

It's amazing he was able to bury this! And there's a whole album of this stuff ... called GOLD

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That dress looks good on her, though. Or would, if she would stand up straight.

Otherwise, she bores the shit out of me.

To be fair, also, I have heard many worse live performances. Katy Perry, anyone?

On another note, I agree that Bill Hader as Snape was fucking brilliant!

Oh wait! Change her name to "Fiona Apple" and we'll all be raving about those strange performances.

Meanwhile, FOX Japan and the Phantom Six and the Greens toil in obscurity.

There is no god.

As a Sunday-morning 'SNL' DVR viewer now & follower since the beginning, it’s notable that these weekly reviews are very good at going into the different segments separately, without as much focus on the quality of the show as a whole; it certainly makes more sense in this instance, due to both it’s premise and what could be described as both wildly extreme and near-comatose passages quickly alternating and even intermingling throughout the course of an average episode- it’s live, can have controversial guests, technical problems, etc

That being said, I have to paraphrase and say “I disagree with both ChristianH AND Dustin about the sketches so much it's absurd.”

I honestly can’t recall so much of an entire episode being so bad as last night’s: Radcliffe with that stupid grin on his face throughout, tame and totally wasted use of time in ‘Update’, Target Lady, the very worst Wiig character ever devised, an embarrassing "Jay Pharaoh Show" sketch w/ that incomprehensible Denzel impression, the already-acknowledged suckage of Lana Del Ray, and every single damn person on that stage besides Radcliffe (NO Hugh Jackman) not even attempting to make one millisecond of eye contact to anything apart from their crappy cue cards. Just a slow, boring bumper-car wreck of a show.

What I hope comes across as serious sincerity in feeling qualified to say these things, it would be in expressing my astonishment at Dustin’s "Jason Sudeikis doing Ricky Gervais — should’ve been funny, but it wasn’t" statement, when from what I had gathered he was quite a fan of his.

I’m Jason Sudeikis’ worst critic and like to rag on him every chance that comes along, but the Ricky Gervais commercial was the (only) highlight for me; he pulled it off well enough, and I laughed audibly throughout, which I don’t usually do even for some of the better episodes.

And ChristianH, if that episode struck you “better than a lot of people,“ that might be evidence that you’re probably not much fun when you’re sober.

I was listening to the Lana Del Ray performance while not actually watching it (was reading the comments here) and it didn't really sound too bad to me, pretty typical for pop stars doing live renditions of their songs on SNL I thought. Then I started watching--I think the main problem was her super awkward body language.

... and ditto to Hairy's Blotto's suggestion that the humor to be found in 'You Can Do Anything' derives primarily from the fact that it's aimed mostly at ... well, really, you people.

Lana's performance was bad, but not that bad. Not Ashlee Simpson bad. Anyway, as far as her saying she's terrified of performing, and that being a possible reason to her awkwardness and pitch problems, Adele has said several times that she's terrified of performing and always feels as if she's going to be sick on stage, so no excuse.

Lana needs a damn stool to sit on too.