As a poet once said—that poet being The Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg, on the delightful Michael Bolton collab “Jack Sparrow”, about which more below—the boys are back. The boys in question?The Lonely Island themselves. The musical comedy trio, consisting of Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, made their name with rude, bizarre and very very viral music videos created as Saturday Night Live sketches in the 2000s and 2010s. Four full-length albums, and a mockumentary, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, soon followed.
Since April, The Lonely Island have been talking through the highlights of their video-making career with fellow SNL alum Seth Meyers on the consistently delightful The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast; this past weekend, they released their first new Saturday Night Live song since 2018. “Sushi Glory Hole” finds them in vintage form, posing as businessmen with a novel proposal: delivering high-grade raw fish to customers via a method usually reserved for anonymous sex. It fulfills the key Lonely Island requirement, in that it’s weird and surreal enough for its teenager-grade humor to be charming rather than off-putting. And it stands with their best work. For those unfamiliar with YouTube circa 2010, or those wanting to relive that heady period, here are Lonely Island’s best songs, ranked.
10. 3-Way (The Golden Rule) (featuring Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake)
We kick off with something from Lonely Island’s imperial phase, when they had enough clout to get both Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga on a song about group sex. It’s actually the third in a trilogy of X-rated tunes the group did with Timberlake. In this one, he and Samberg (dressed in 1990s R&B leather) boast to each other about a girl they’re about to hook up with—which turns out to be the same women, played by Gaga. They’re both game to get involved simultaneously, though as Samberg croons worriedly, “Here in the dark, it’s hard to tell, where her body ends, and my homie’s begins”.
9. Sushi Glory Hole
