SNL Performances That Destroyed Careers

It's hard to believe, but Saturday Night Live has been on the air for over 30 years. In that time, the show has logged a seemingly infinite number of memorable performances, both from hosts and musicians. If the opinions of the A.V. Club are to be believed (and they usually are), a performance on Saturday Night Live can still make or break an artist's career. As the site puts it, "[Show creator Lorne Michaels has] maintained the integrity of his show as an up-to-date snapshot of contemporary pop culture... SNL is easily the single most important television show on which not to bomb." No pressure, hosts, bands, and musicians. 

In the cases of the following acts (both musical and "comedic"), a poor showing on SNL ended up putting a real damper on some careers, or portended a downward spiral. Curious to find out who paid the price for floundering on live TV? Read on.

Irish singer Sinead O'Connor caused a major stir with a 1992 SNL performance most remembered for its prescient political statement. At the end of her a cappella performance of Bob Marley's song "War," O'Connor pulled out a photograph of the pope, ripped it to shreds, and said, "Fight the real enemy." As the Herald-Journal described, network officials were horrified by O'Connor's unrehearsed actions. 

According to Rolling Stone, the performance prompted more than 4,000 angered phone calls to NBC, and O'Connor was subsequently banned from the show. She experienced major backlash, as detailed by the New York Daily News, and spent the rest of the 90s making music (though nothing came close to the popularity of her 1990 single "Nothing Compares 2 U") and then announcing her (ultimately temporary) retirement. According to the paper, in 1997 she denounced her behavior on SNL, saying it was "a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel."

In the 2000s, O'Connor reemerged after a long hiatus to explain her beef with the Catholic Church, justifying her SNL performance as a protest against the physical and sexual abuse endured by children at the hands of the church. Writing in The Washington Post, O'Connor explained, "Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization... I knew my action would cause trouble, but I wanted to force a conversation where there was a need for one; that is part of being an artist." In recent years, O'Connor has made headlines again for her erratic behavior, though sadly not as much for her artistry.

Appearing on the Jan. 14, 2012 episode, then-debut artist Del Rey's stiff performance of her song "Video Games" was widely and swiftly panned. Rolling Stone described the backlash, explaining that, "[Del Rey's] shaky, slightly dead-eyed Saturday Night Live debut was treated like a national emergency, inspiring weeks of debate..." News anchor Brian Williams even sipped the haterade, writing to Gawker blogger Nick Denton, "Brooklyn hippster [sic] Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night — booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show's history, for starters."

As Entertainment Weekly reported at the time, Twitter also went crazy after the performance; actress Juliette Lewis even felt compelled to comment, writing in a since-deleted Tweet, "Wow watching this 'singer' on SNL is like watching a 12 yearold [sic] in their bedroom when theyre pretending to sing and perform #signofourtimes." Del Rey told Rolling Stone about the negative impact the performance nearly had on her career, explaining how, "Everyone I knew suddenly wasn't so sure about me... They were like, 'Maybe I don't want to be associated with her — not a great reputation." However, the magazine reported, her producer Jimmy Iovine came to the rescue and introduced her to in-ear monitors. 

In this case, the SNL-induced career meltdown was short-lived; Del Rey's album Born to Die was released two weeks later on Jan. 27, and went on to sell over 7 million copies as of 2014, according to The Fader. 

On Halloween 1981, punk band Fear put in a seriously memorable Saturday Night Live performance in which, per The Daily Beast, "Noses were broken, brawls broke out between New York and Washington, D.C., natives, pumpkins were launched at security guards' heads and a NYPD-versus-punks chase out of Rockefeller Center spilled into the streets outside." The band was apparently a favorite of then-cast member John Belushi, Grantland reported, also noting that "Fear got on because nobody at SNL knew what they were doing at the time."

According to Flavorwire, the performance left the show with an estimated $20,000 in damages; a la Adrien Brody, they were officially banned from appearing again and some clubs refused to book them. Fear's frontman Lee Ving later explained to Rolling Stone, "They swore that night they'd never rebroadcast our footage... It was shortsighted of the Saturday Night Live staff and ownership to dis-include the performance in their anniversary episodes." 

The band certainly gained infamy, if not actual fame, from the performance.