Saturday Night Live is more than just a sketch comedy show. Having been on television for decades, the show is a national institution, and as such, is often one of the first TV shows to respond to a national tragedy or the passing of a beloved celebrity. Sure, a news channel will report the news, but it’s SNL that helps us process it, whether it’s a terrorist strike or the passing of a comedian who had done time on the show. Often, these emotional tributes, sketches, or musical moments go right down in history with the actual event itself.
SNL isn’t afraid to be emotional when it wants to be, though some Saturday Night Live heartfelt moments are more touching and sentimental than others. Below are some of the most emotional moments on SNL since it first aired, so grab your tissues and get ready to go down a YouTube rabbit hole reliving all of them.
1. Steve Martin Pays Tribute To Original Cast Member Gilda Radner In His Monologue
Saturday Night Live cast members are like family, so when Steve Martin was slated to guest host the night that Gilda Radner passed in 1989, it’s hard not to cry along with him. News of her passing had reportedly broken during rehearsals, and Martin’s original opening monologue was trashed.
Instead, fighting back tears, Martin introduces a clip of him and Radner that had originally aired in 1978 – a parody of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in The Band Wagon. Martin joked, still choked up, that the video reminded him of “how great” she was (and how young he looked). Throughout the show, Radner’s first husband, who was the SNL band leader at the time, wore a black armband in tribute. A fitting send-off for one of the original SNL greats.
2. Adam Sandler Performs A Tribute Song About His Close Friend Chris Farley
Chris Farley’s Saturday Night Live characters and sketches are some of the most iconic ones ever, hands down. When he passed at the age of 33 in 1997, it was a shock to all of his fans. But it wasn’t until 2019 that one of his closest friends – and fellow SNL alum – Adam Sandler performed a tribute song on the show, complete with a montage of pictures of the late comedian, driving it all home. The song included lines like, “He was a one-man party, you know I’m talking about, I’m talking about my friend Chris Farley.”
He also addressed his friend’s substance use, noting that Farley was never worried when people said he would end up like John Belushi or John Candy. Sandler crooned, “He said, ‘Those guys are my heroes, that’s all fine and dandy.'” Sandler also gave a shout out to his legacy, singing that kids still watch clips of Farley’s sketches on YouTube and look up to him. It was as if for a few minutes, Sandler brought Farley back, and as Leslie Jones tweeted that night, there was not one dry eye in the house.
3. Lorne Michaels, Rudy Giuliani, And A Group Of First Responders Break The Tension In The First Post-9/11 Episode
Literally no one knew what to do on television after the 9/11 strikes on the World Trade Center. Many networks canceled programming or even started to edit the buildings out of opening credits or scenes in their shows, such as Sex and the City. But Saturday Night Live is all but synonymous with New York City – and it was a welcome relief that Lorne Michaels decided that the show would go on.
Instead of a goofy cold open, the episode that night opened up with a group of first responders, Michaels, and then New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. After going back and forth about persevering and moving on, Michaels delivered one of the most legendary setups in SNL history, asking the mayor if it was “okay to be funny.” The mayor then quipped in return, “Why start now?” After the collective pain of the terrorist strike, dissing SNL was at least something normal people could focus on.
4. Horatio Sanz Sings A Neighborly Song In Tribute To The Late Mr. Rogers
Horatio Sanz is not known as a serious man – or someone who could resist breaking on Saturday Night Live. But when Mr. Rogers passed in 2003, he was the go-to guy for a touching tribute that drove home the fact that TV fans had lost a real icon.
Sanz sat on the stage in a shirt, tie, yellow cardigan, and canvas sneakers – a nod to Fred Rogers’s iconic look. After saying that the show had meant a lot to him growing up, Sanz begins to sing “You Are Special” a capella, hitting all the right notes, though his voice is a little shaky. It was simple and sweet, just like Mr. Rogers.
5. A Children’s Choir Performs ‘Silent Night’ In The First Episode After The Sandy Hook Tragedy
When tragedy strikes, leave it to Lorne Michaels and his team to respond in appropriate and moving ways. For example, in the first episode after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012, the New York City Children’s Chorus performed in the cold open.
It was one of the most moving and emotional cold opens in SNL history, with the kids singing Silent Night. It was a chilling moment, as the sweetness of the kids’ singing only served to recall the especially heinous tragedy that had occurred the week prior.
6. Phil Hartman And Jan Hooks Are Honored With ‘Love Is A Dream’
One of the most bizarre and moving moments in SNL history has to be the three-minute short film Love Is A Dream, which was made in 1987 by Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Tom Schiller, and Neal Marshad. If you’re looking for jokes, it won’t be in this short, which was described by Deadspin as a “strange, sad, beautiful piece of retro-romanticism.”
The film first aired in Season 3 of SNL, but was reaired in 1998 after Phil Hartman passed, and then again in 2014 when Hooks passed. It might be one of the best roles these two ever took on, funny or not.
7. Paul Simon Performs ‘The Boxer’ On The First Episode Post-9/11
The days following the 9/11 strikes on the World Trade Center in 2001 were like living in the Twilight Zone. It might sound quaint now, but when Saturday Night Live aired the weekend afterward, it felt like a collective sigh of relief that things might someday be normal again. Paul Simon performed a somber version of “The Boxer” during the cold open, wearing an FDNY hat with the American flag draped behind him, that helped to ease into the rest of the sketches to come, balancing the seriousness of current events and the silliness of a live sketch show.
Who knew that singing along to the chorus – “lie-lah-lie…” – would feel so cathartic?
8. Jason Aldean Performs Tom Petty’s ‘Won’t Back Down’ In The First Episode After The Las Vegas Shooting
This is an emotional double whammy as it was both a tribute to the lives lost in the Las Vegas shooting of 2017 and a send-off for Tom Petty.
Jason Aldean was on stage for the closing performance of the country music festival when the shooting began, so it was all the more meaningful that SNL invited him to be the musical guest for the first episode after the shooting. Instead of performing one of his own songs, he did Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down,” a song about perseverance and “standing one’s ground,” which was an apt choice in the wake of a national tragedy.
More than paying tribute to the targets of gun violence, Petty had passed the day after the Vegas shooting, so the performance also served as a memorial to the musician.
Petty was all but a regular on SNL, performing as the musical guest a total of eight times and also being impersonated by David Spade over the years in sketches. He would have been proud of Aldean’s performance that night.
9. Cecily Strong Addresses The Paris Attacks In A Bilingual Monologue
SNL writers and talent often have to switch gears at the last minute in order to address (or mock) some unforeseen event. This is what happened in 2015, when the Paris attacks occurred from Friday, November 13, into the next day. In order to show solidarity with Paris, Cecily Strong opened the show. Not with a goofy political sketch but wearing a lace black dress and delivering a bilingual monologue. In it, she attested that Paris’s light “will never go out” and claimed that the Big Apple would always stand by the European capital.
Even years later, the monologue will bring a tear to your eye, as Strong fought back a tear or two of her own delivering the heartfelt message.