Saturday Night Live: Are we in for a very musical episode?

Season 46 of Saturday Night Live has been a real treat for fans of musical comedy.

While SNL has long incorporated music into the show, from the Blues Brothers sketches in the late 1970s to the Lonely Island digital shorts in the mid-2000s, this season has felt particularly musical.

There have been fully fledged music videos, like “Loco,” utterly ridiculous musical parodies, like “Bachelor Party,” half sketch/half songs, like “Strollin’ (to the Polls),” more traditional sketches built around a song, like “Driver’s License,” and sketches where a song just came out of nowhere, like “Tiny Horse.” And that’s just scratching the surface of the musical sketches that Saturday Night Live has done this season.

Chris Redd has proven himself to be an incredible songwriter, having written songs like “Bottom of Your Face” and “Boomers Got the Vax.” Melissa Villaseñor is an unbelievable musical impressionist (this season, she’s done Billie Eilish, Björk, and many more). Many of this season’s hosts and musical guests, like Adele and Miley Cyrus, have leant their incredible pipes to a sketch or two.

Some of the cast members are great singers too, like Cecily Strong and Kate McKinnon. And even those in the cast who aren’t the most musically gifted can still carry a tune, as Kyle Mooney showed in “Bits.” This cast and crew clearly loves making musical comedy, and so far, they’ve been very good at it.

So as SNL welcomes Keegan-Michael Key and Olivia Rodrigo into the fold this weekend, we might be in store for the most musical episode yet.

Keegan-Michael Key has recently made a name for himself as a musical actor, having starred in movies like The Prom and Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey on Netflix. Before that, he did plenty of musical comedy on his sketch show, Key and Peele, such as “A Capella” and “The Great Choir Fight.” He also demonstrated his talent for musical impressions on the Tonight Show a couple of years ago.

Next, Key will appear alongside Cecily Strong in the musical comedy television series Schmigadoon! for Apple TV+. Hopefully, the two pair up on this week’s SNL.

Olivia Rodrigo is no stranger to musical comedy either, although this might be her first time doing it for an adult audience. Her big break came in 2016 on the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark, where she played a character who wrote and performed comedic songs for the internet. Her music video for “Lemonade Stand” feels very much like a kids version of one of SNL’s music videos.

One of the great things about SNL is that we never quite know what we’re going to get. That being said, I’m really hoping to see some excellent musical comedy this Saturday night.

Are you looking forward to Keegan-Michael Key’s performance on Saturday Night Live? Do you have a favorite musical sketch from season 46? Share your thoughts in the comments below!