The Last Great Hope for Music on Late-Night TV

Here’s an embarrassing thing about me: I still watch a ton of late-night TV. Every morning, as I munch on some Wheaties and groggily sip a cup of tea, I fire up YouTube and scroll through my subscriptions in search of a few clips to ease me into the day. As of late, it’s been extremely bleak: Since almost every late-night show is political now, and politics is getting more dire by the hour, watching Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel or Seth Myers attempt to add levity to our collective shitstorm can feel like watching a clown honk its nose in front of a battle tank.

So I end up just looking out for guests (Tim Robinson was great on Late Night a couple of weeks ago) and musical acts I care about. This can also be bleak, especially when it comes to music. Live music has always been shunted to the very end of most of these shows—if they featured music at all—and it has historically been thought of as a way to just keep studio audiences engaged and a reason for non-geriatric viewers to pay attention. In our era of shrinking late-night TV ratings and budgets, music is often the first line item to be crossed out.

Seth Myers was forced to lay off his band last year. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert has been airing fewer and fewer performances: This year, only about 30 percent of new episodes have featured a musical act. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon has a more consistent musical presence, though the days of genuinely exciting moments like Tyler, the Creator jumping on the host’s back are long gone. (Also, as someone who wants to retain the last few brain cells I have left, I generally just can’t with Fallon.) Saturday Night Live is still drawing the heaviest hitters, but for every incredible Lady Gaga performance there’s a perfunctory appearance from Morgan Wallen. Which means there’s a big, open lane for a show to swoop in and become an exciting new home for music on late-night TV. Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney is that show.

The refreshingly random weekly series is in the middle of a three-month run on Netflix, and its music has been unimpeachable thus far. There was Cypress Hill, in tailored suits, doing “Hits From the Bong” backed by a full orchestra. There was the episode where Kim Gordon and Kim Deal performed both separately and together: The alt-rock legends respectively took the stage near the very start of the show, breaking with late-night orthodoxy, and then returned at the end to perform their somber, spoken-word collaboration “Little Trouble Girl,” from Sonic Youth’s 1995 album Washing Machine, live for the first time ever. There were jolts of energy from lesser-known rock acts Mannequin Pussy, Bartees Strange, and Metz, the latter of which briefly reunited just for the show after announcing an indefinite hiatus last year. There was a beautiful chamber orchestra piece led by the classical violinist Daniel Hope. And there was 81-year-old Randy Newman, one of America’s greatest living songwriters, performing his classic ballad “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” and his biting, scarily relevant 1972 track “Political Science.” “We give them money, but are they grateful?/No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful,” Newman sang, sounding a lot like a certain White House resident. “They don’t respect us, so let’s surprise them/We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them.” The performance marked the most overtly political moment of Everybody’s Live, which generally thumbs its nose at that kind of humor in favor of nonsensical goofiness inspired by Conan O’Brien and David Letterman (both of whom have shown up as guests, symbolically passing the torch).

Yes, these music bookings work because they are remarkably well-curated—a surprising mix of all-time icons and restless younger artists. But another reason why they’re so good is because they feel personal to Mulaney. He’s a huge music lover who has been mixing comedy and songcraft for years in his specials as well as his beloved, elaborate Broadway spoofs on SNL. So when he introduces each act, he looks totally psyched, and it’s clear he’s very familiar with their work. “My son and I listen to this every morning,” he said while setting up Daniel Hope’s performance. He threw to Bartees Strange’s song “Sober” by saying it was his favorite from the singer’s new album, and it wasn’t hard to connect the dots between the track (chorus: “That’s why it’s hard to be sober”) and Mulaney’s own famed struggles with addiction. And the comedian even dedicated some of his monologue to Philadelphia’s Mannequin Pussy the night they played. “Our studio has been flooded with telegrams all week because of these youngsters and the excitement has reached all corners of the globe,” he boasted. “We even received this wire today. I was very excited: ‘Me and Michelle are watching along with the rest of the world. Long live Mannequin Pussy. Yours, Barack Obama.’” These gestures make the music feel more like a handmade mixtape than a rote obligation.

And whereas most late-night music performances are pretty bare-bones in terms of their stage setup, the ones on Everybody’s Live look like they could be on the Grammys. It sure seemed like a decent amount of money was spent on the nun costumes and bespoke stained glass backdrop for Mannequin Pussy’s giddily blasphemous performance of “I Got Heaven.” I loved how fake snow rained down in front of Metz—to go along with the episode’s “Christmas in April” theme—for the entirety of their appearance. And someone had to buy, paint, and wheel in all those colorful upright pianos that surrounded Randy Newman.

Even a few of the show’s best comedy bits have been music-adjacent. Like when Mulaney devoted 10 whole minutes of his monologue one night to how he was scammed by a guy who claimed to be Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s manager (you have to watch it to understand). Or when Aidy Bryant showed up in full Jelly Roll makeup to debut her wonderfully half-assed impersonation of the country-rap star. Or my personal favorite, when Mulaney attempted to conduct a hard-hitting, 60 Minutes-style interview with Michael Jackson’s grown-up chimp Bubbles in which the belligerent primate used a soundboard to dismiss accusations against his old owner and said things like, “I got bills and shit.” It was amazing.

There’s a long history of classic musical moments on late-night TV. R.E.M. on Letterman. The White Stripes on Conan. Frank Ocean on Fallon. The recent documentary Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music, directed by Questlove and Oz Rodriguez, chronicled so many unforgettable performances and sketches, from Kanye to Sinéad O'Connor to “Lazy Sunday.” Everybody’s Live is gunning for those kinds of moments, and it’s a joy to watch.