It’s always kind of a big deal for musical artists to get to perform on the Saturday Night Live stage. Whether they are just starting out or established successes, a stint on SNL is a level of exposure that most artists would be lucky to have. The high profile gig does open musicians up to close scrutiny, and musical guest Lorde recently found herself accused of lip-syncing to "Magnets" with Disclosure following her appearance on the show. She has now taken to social media to address the question of whether or not she was lip syncing. Here's what she had to say:
Credit goes to Lorde for her civility in addressing the rumor. While other artists might have gotten a touch snippy – or at least used a bunch of those 140 characters for exclamation points and angry emojis – she chose to take the rumor as a compliment. Sure, the rumor impugned her honor as a musician, but there are much worse insults that she could have faced than being told that her performance was too good to be humanly possible. Check it out!
Of course, Saturday Night Live has not been without drama when it comes to musical guests. Ashlee Simpson’s lip-syncing debacle of 2004 is pretty memorable; it also happened to be the first time in SNL history that a musical guest walked off the stage. Sinead O’Connor also notably went off script in her 1992 appearance as musical guest when she ripped up a photo of then Pope John Paul II live on the air. It’s not necessarily unreasonable to think that there could have been some behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on with Lorde's Saturday Night Live’s musical performance.
Thankfully, Lorde will not be joining the ranks of Ashlee Simpson and Sinead O’Connor in SNL musical guest infamy. Hopefully, the excellence of her performance (that was almost too flawless to be natural) and the grace with which she addressed the rumor will be enough to bring her back to Saturday Night Live in the future. The young New Zealand singer clearly has the talent to make it as big as any of her predecessors, and her career may well be one to follow on the music scene.
Lorde’s appearance on SNL came on last week, during an episode hosted by Elizabeth Banks. The show has a ton of awesome guests coming up, including Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Catch Saturday Night Live when it airs on Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
