SNL's "Middle School Lovin'"
Aka "Grind Song"
Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet tour just ended, and I spent a good chunk of Thanksgiving Day chatting with a cousin about her best arrest. My personal favorite was Anne Hathaway (the Princess Diaries of it all, c’mon), with the Ayo Edebiri / Clairo pairing and Miss Piggy as my runners-up. Sabrina’s been everywhere this year, including hosting the best episode of SNL yet this season. Her evening in 8H revived something SNL hasn’t done well in years: a great musical parody.
I always get excited when there’s a host who’s down to get musical or — on the flip side — a musical guest who’s down to lend some vocals to a silly little song. The stakes were high for Sabrina because she’s built a brand as not just a pop icon, but a funny pop icon. She crushed 2024’s favorite (and overdone) sketch “Domingo” when she was just a musical guest. Thinking of her potential as host really got the internet riled up.
But she absolutely delivered. My highlight of the night wasn’t the “Domingo” rendition, but another musical parody, reminiscent of SNL’s glory days: “Middle School Lovin’” aka “Grind Song”.
Recently, I’ve been missing YRGRLS, SNL’s now-sunset girl group that ran from the mid-2010s till 2019. Starring Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Vanessa Bayer, Leslie Jones, and some combo of the show’s other women, YRGRLS performed half a dozen songs over as many years on air. I often think of YRGRLS as a direct response to The Lonely Island, Andy Samberg’s all-male musical parody group that dominated SNL in the 2000s. Their style was stupid, indulgent, and so blatantly boyish. Hits like “Dick in a Box” stole the show, and soon enough, the women wanted to get musical too.
YRGRLS made their debut with “Do It On My Twin Bed,” but really gained SNL notoriety with “Back Home Ballers,” featuring host Cameron Diaz. They crooned their last little ditty in 2019 with the dark but accurate “Welcome to Hell” (I always love the Saoirse Ronan feature in this one), and we haven’t heard from them since. SNL’s tested out various musical sketches in the intervening years; some personal favorites are “Crucible Cast Party,” “Come Back Barack,” and “Three Sad Virgins” (hey Taylor!). But none of those really hit “Back Home Ballers” levels of fame.
They’re all hilarious and deeply specific, but I think that all of these later hits were a bit too esoteric, sacrificing relatability as a result. Take “Crucible Cast Party” as an example. Featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, CCP is about the afterparty of a high school production of The Crucible, spoofing the same theater kids that Ben Platt and Molly Gordon later would in Theater Camp. It’s hilarious and visceral, but as someone who wasn’t a theater kid, it hits a limit on how funny it is for me.
“Back Home Ballers,” on the other hand, went viral because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s all the more relevant considering most of the country just made the trek back to their childhood homes for Thanksgiving. My mom puts out bowls like a goddamn professional. So many adults can relate to that feeling of busting up to your front door for your first Thanksgiving break home from college and feeling like you fucking rule this place. It just captured something that I hadn’t seen on TV before — this deep specificity in a song. It was absolutely brilliant.
I felt the same way when I watched “Middle School Lovin’”. Starring Sabrina Carpenter and Bowen Yang, this sketch was like seeing YRGRLS incarnate. The beat is immediately reminiscent of “Do It On My Twin Bed.” It’s almost giving Troy Bolton in High School Musical 3 singing “the night of nights, the night of nights tonight.” The opening shot of Sabrina’s braces and her peace-sign Instagram post. Jeremy Culhane in an American Eagle striped polo. The pure chaos of a middle school dance. And there’s no feeling like watching someone capture your exact experience on TV.
I’m not saying YRGRLS are back — there’s no actual girl group forming at SNL right now. It’s more that the spirit of them may be back, the idea of a musical spoof that’s equal parts outrageous and so specific that it’s deeply relatable. The current cast is clearly taking more shots on goal; Saturday night’s Melissa McCarthy—hosted episode featured “Cousin Planet,” an early-’90s, MTV-music-video-style spoof about where cousins go after the holidays. It didn’t quite do it for me the way “Middle School Lovin’” did, though I admire Veronika Slowikowska and Jane Wickline’s attempt to channel their forebears.
I’m hopeful we haven’t left the vibe of YRGRLS behind as juggernaut names like Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant have said goodbye to 8H. “Middle School Lovin’” gave me a little glimmer of hope.
