Roddy Ricch was initially slated to perform as the first musical guest of 2022 on Saturday Night Live tonight, but the rapper had to postpone his first appearance on the show due to Covid-19 exposure on his team. While plenty of pop heads sure did wish the folks at SNL might consider bringing back Charli XCX because her spot got canceled due to rampant Omicron variant spread in late December, that scheduling didn’t work, and instead, Jack Antonoff of Bleachers stepped in.
Antonoff makes sense because he just released a new Bleachers album in July of 2021 called Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night, and that’s basically the same goal that SNL has. Kicking off tonight’s show with the jazzy “How Dare You Want More,” he ventured into a slower song for the second set of the evening. Though Antonoff release the album last summer, he started sharing singles from the record as early as fall of 2020, including a collaboration with his idol, Bruce Springsteen, called “Chinatown,” and the B-side, “45.” Obviously, it made sense for Jack to play the song since collaborating with Springsteen is a big deal for anybody, especially an artist who has clearly been so deeply influenced by his bombastic sound and New Jersey roots. Check out Bleachers performing the song above, sadly, sans Bruce.