What better way to start off a prime-time 50th-anniversary special for “Saturday Night Live” than after fifty years of comedy and music—and what felt like an equal amount of anticipation and hype? Quite peacefully, it transpires.
On Sunday, the highly anticipated “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” premiered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza’s Studio 8H with musical guests Sabrina Carpenter (who had previously performed as a musical guest on the show in May 2024) and longtime “S.N.L.” fixture Paul Simon.
Cold-blooded mythology Paul Simon, a frequent musical guest on Saturday Night Live and a friend of Lorne Michaels, the showrunner, sang a duet of “Homeward Bound” with pop star Sabrina Carpenter as the show’s opening number.
Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter open #SNL50 with Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel pic.twitter.com/Pby0HL09B8
— ASTHTC (@theASTHTC) February 17, 2025
A lighthearted joke was made between them, establishing a motif that would continue throughout the evening: Time passes, whether you like it or not. Simon said they were about to play a song that he had performed on the show with George Harrison in 1976. “I was not born then,” Carpenter said, “and neither were my parents.”
It was a great way to kick off the anniversary program, and the two musicians went great together.
The song was written by Simon during his time with Simon & Garfunkel and had its premiere on the duo’s 1966 album “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.”
Steve Martin, a 16-time host whose meteoric rise to fame in the 1970s gave “S.N.L.” the credibility and momentum it needed in its early days, would be the perfect choice to deliver the opening monologue on this occasion.
Following the performance, Simon and Carpenter delivered the legendary show-opening line, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
It was fantastic to watch Simon and Carpenter begin Sunday in Studio 8H because he is such a pivotal role in Saturday Night Live’s history.
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