Watch SNL‘s 100th Digital Short
Final Saturday’s Will Ferrell-hosted Saturday Evening Live contained the 100th Digital Short, a celebratory musical quantity featuring Justin Bieber, Julian Casablancas, Justin Timberlake, Natalie Portman, Michael Bolton, Usher, Jon Hamm and about each imaginable character from the Digital Shorts. There could not be numerous a lot more of these Andy Samberg is rumored to be leaving the show after up coming week’s Mick Jagger-hosted finale. Watch it below.
Here’s the entire checklist of Digital Shorts. Personally, I’m nonetheless extremely partial to “Jack Sparrow.”
Justin Bieber + Justin Timberlake Help ‘SNL’ Celebrate 100th Digital Short
NBC
The Justins – Bieber and Timberlake — assisted ‘Saturday Night Live’ celebrate its 100th digital quick on final night’s episode (May 12) in an evident way. They appeared in a digital quick celebrating their digital shorts and what’s in their undershorts.
The Biebs seems as however he were a member of the writing team that creates the shorts, sitting alongside Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone, as even though he is replacing Akiva Schaffer of their creating troupe.
The boys don tuxes and dance, celebrating their capacity to suck their own, well, a element of their anatomy. Fill in the blanks yourselves, young children!
Timberlake returns for a reprisal of the famed, Emmy-winning ‘D— in a Box’ song. Michael Bolton reprises his role as the wannabe Jack Sparrow cinephile and Natalie Portman goes nuts. Usher also participates in the star-studded fun, as does episode host Will Ferrell.
Clearly, the boys have a specific entire body component on the brain and they like to make songs out of it. Getting the Biebs quit by and having Timberlake return upped the ante of the celebration. It is also stuffed with tons of celebs and jokes, so watch, enjoy and see if you can select ‘em all out.
Watch The Lonely Island’s Emmy Medley
To hear our friends at Videogum tell it, this year’s Emmy Awards were wack as fuck, something that should shock absolutely everyone who has never watched a second of any Emmy telecast. But just like they do on Saturday Night Live, the kids in the Lonely Island showed up to save at least a couple of minutes of the show. In their big moment, they ran through a quick medley of recent SNL Digital Video highlights and brought out Michael Bolton, Akon, John Stamos, Ed Helms, Maya Rudolph, a battalion of dancers, and a banner that said “#1 Sex Champions.” Watch the performance below.
Shout out to whoever was in charge of applying Bolton’s fake Jack Sparrow mustache.
Lonely Island Recruit Michael Bolton, Akon + More for a 2011 Emmys Medley
Kevin Winter, Getty Images
Oh, those The Lonely Island boys! Fusing comedy with pop music is their trademark, and they do it on record (‘Turtleneck & Chain’) and on TV (‘SNL’) and on awards shows (the Emmys!)
During this evening’s Emmys ceremony, the trio performed live, wearing spiffy, white jacketed tuxes and kicking off their medley with ‘Jack Sparrow.’ It wouldn’t have been complete without a Michael Bolton guest appearance as Capt’n Jack Sparrow, dressed in full pirate garb and surrounded by nautical, high seas props.
Actors John Stamos, Maya Rudolph and Ed Helms performed the Island’s ‘3-Way (The Golden Rule),’ which was featured on the season finale of ‘SNL’ and was initially performed by Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and ‘SNL’ star/Lonely Island leader Andy Samberg.
Just when you thought the performance couldn’t get any more studded with star power, singer Akon showed up, singing Lonely Island’s ‘I Just Had Sex.’ The Lonely Island boys also gyrated while hanging around actor William H. Macy.
While the Emmys are much more light-hearted and less self-congratulatory than, say, the Academy Awards, this performance was a welcome and appreciated shot in the arm for an already funny ceremony. The Emmys producers certainly know what they are doing.
Album Review: The Lonely Island – Turtleneck & Chain
On the surface, it seems a little silly to give a real review to a fake rap album. But The Lonely Island is not your average musical comedy group. They nab huge guest spots and write soaring hooks around songs that are good enough to make you have to decide between singing along and cracking up. Plus, with a Grammy nomination under their belts, they know how important they are to the music world (“We invented this fake rap shit/the world needs us!”) Who are we to argue with them? The boys are back, and that’s never a bad thing.
Turtleneck & Chain starts out strong – the boys bring the laughs fast and furious for the first four songs. Album opener “We’re Back” is a perfect send-up of any big name rap album intro – complete with Jorma Taccone as the hype man – that juxtaposes the hard rap feel with the very un-rap lyrical content about the their own impotence. Like many of their songs, the next track “Mama” is a one-note joke – but like many others, it’s so funny that it doesn’t matter.
The boys get to Turtleneck & Chain’s major highlight fast, as the Akon-featuring “I Just Had Sex” comes in just under four minutes into the album. In terms of viral internet impact, “I Just Had Sex” is up there with “Dick in a Box” and “Jizz in My Pants” as one of their mega hits. With over 90 million (and counting) YouTube views, it’s unquestionably the most popular song on the album – only the “Dick in a Box” sequel “Motherlover” even comes somewhat close. Both of these hits work well on the album without their visual counterparts. The sheer joy of “Sex” especially oozes off the record, and it’s always great to hear Justin Timberlake singing again in any capacity (seriously, JT, come back to music), even if it’s all about him loving Andy Samberg’s mother (“Imma be the syrup, she can be my waffle”).
The guest list on this record is impressive – with everyone from Michael Bolton to Nicki Minaj – but some of them work much better than others. Michael Bolton in particular gets put to good use in “Jack Sparrow” – the boys just want to make a sexy club jam, but Bolton is distracted by the Pirates of the Caribbean marathon he just watched and ends up singing about Jack Sparrow instead, much to the chagrin of Samberg and the gang. It’s a great gag that gets better when put to video, but it still plays almost as well in simple audio. On the other hand, Beck apparently showed up on “Attracted to Us”, but it’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it, as he’s mostly relegated to being a backup singer. Others still are just there – Snoop Dogg’s guest verse seems like it could have shown up on any Snoop-featuring track. Yes, he’s singing about fluffy turtlenecks and sippin’ on light beer, but seeing as how he’s become a big parody of himself these days, it doesn’t seem too far off anyways.
Just like Incredibad, the non-digital short songs are a mixed bag. Even the most uneven ones have their moments, but only a couple really live up to their SNL-appearing counterparts. The title track is just a wonderfully silly rap song, while “No Homo” is a fantastic parody of the dumb trend of rappers tossing around “no homo” to defend themselves against sounding gay. Predictably, the song ends up with at least one of the dudes coming out of the closet (but, “no homo”!) and then just as the album began, there’s a great take on any-given-album’s outro. The dudes wear some of their influences on their sleeves this time around, as “Rocky” is just a more outrageous (and gory) take on DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s “I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson”, while “Trouble on Dookie Island” is a pitch-perfect Ghostface Killah parody. If it weren’t so ridiculous (and wasn’t about poop), it wouldn’t sound too out of place on FishScale – the dudes never stop rapping for a hook, and it’s got a Scarface audio clip in there for good measure.
On the Charts: Lonely Island’s Schtick Lands Them at Number Three
F. Scott Schafer
By Steve Knopper
May 18, 2011 3:35 PM ET
The Lonely Island SNL crew score top album debut—where do they stand in the pantheon of blockbuster comedy albums?
Image Credit: F. Scott Schafer
This week’s Billboard album chart tells the same story it has been telling for the past few months, as Adele’s juggernaut 21 has notched yet another week at the top spot.
With that and yet another entry in the Now That’s What I Call Music! series taking up the top two slots, the highest-charting debut belongs to the Lonely Island, which checks in at number three with around 68,000 albums sold.
That’s a pretty impressive number, especially when you consider the variables. While Turtleneck & Chain is both hilarious and fantastically catchy (which is important, because the jokes can’t last forever), it also consists largely of songs that people have heard before in various other forms, mostly as digital shorts on Saturday Night Live, and appeals to an Internet-savvy audience less likely to actually go out and purchase music (the same can be said of the sales of Tyler, the Creator’s Goblin, which also had a respectable debut this week).
So who are the Lonely Island’s peers on the Mount Rushmore of comedy albums? Glad you asked.
The Lonely Island have a long way to go before they can count themselves among the most potent forces in comedy-on-record. Released in the wake of the incredible viral-before-viral-was-a-thing success of “The Chanukah Song,” Adam Sandler’s What the Hell Happened to Me? spent 57 weeks in the Billboard album chart on its way to going double platinum. Chris Rock’s third album Bigger & Blacker ruled the summer of 1999 on the back of the MTV hit “No Sex” (which was a parody of “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”).