Cher, Ariana Grande and Lily Allen are among the stars to round off the year for Saturday Night Live, the former being a musical guest for the first time in almost 40 years.
- READ MORE: Lily Allen – ‘West End Girl’ review: a vicious, vulnerable and victorious comeback
Grande, Josh O’Connor and Melissa McCarthy are set to host December’s episodes, with Cher, Allen and Dijon being their respective musical guests.
McCarthy will be hosting the next episode, on December 6, with singer-songwriter Dijon the musical guest.
Allen, who released her critically acclaimed album ‘West End Girl’ last month, will return to SNL on December 13. She was previously a musical guest back in 2007, and will appear alongside host O’Connor, who’s making his hosting debut.
NME gave ‘West End Girl’ a four-star review, describing the album – recorded following the breakdown of Allen’s marriage to Stranger Things star David Harbour – as “a vicious, vulnerable and victorious comeback.”
Grande, whose new movie Wicked: For Good comes out on Friday (November 21), will be hosting the year’s final episode on December 20. It will be her third time hosting – she last hosted in 2024, and had Stevie Nicks as her music guest.
This time, she’ll have Cher, who performed her 1989 hit ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ at the ‘SNL 50’ concert in February. The legendary singer, who joined Cyndi Lauper for her final farewell tour show in August, was last the musical guest in 1987, almost four decades ago.
Season 51 of the long-running late-night variety show premiered on NBC and Peacock on October 24. Among the season’s hosts so far have been Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter – who was her own musical guest – and Amy Poehler, while the other musical guests have included Doja Cat, Olivia Dean and Sombr.
Dean made her SNL debut over the weekend (November 15), and performed ‘Man I Need’ and ‘Let Alone The One You Love’ from her second album ‘The Art Of Loving’.
Glen Powell hosted the episode, and shared a clip of a spoof music video he made when he was younger. It featured Fall Out Boy’s ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’, and the band responded, asking him if he wants to direct their next video.
Carpenter, meanwhile, performed ‘Manchild’ and ‘Nobody’s Son’ last month, with the latter courting controversy – fellow singer Rina Sawayama called out the performance’s “cultural insensitivity”.
She also addressed the furore surrounding the cover of her latest album ‘Man’s Best Friend’, joking, “Everyone thinks of me as this horndog pop star, but there’s really so much more to me. I’m not just horny … I’m also turned on. And I’m sexually charged. And I love to read. My favourite book is the encyclopaedia, it’s so big, and it’s hard, and okay seriously, sorry.”
