“Saturday Night Live” Musical Guest List More Notable For Who Isn’t On It

Saturday Night Live is coming back to NBC’s airwaves on Sept. 26, and fresh off dropping of one of its least objectionable cast members, the show’s announced its first four host/musical guest pairings. U2 had previously been announced as the season premiere’s musicians-in-residence; the other three announced acts will, it seems, be holding it down for the single ladies. Sept. 26 – Megan Fox/U2 Oct. 3 – Ryan Reynolds/Lady GaGa Oct. 10 – Drew Barrymore/Regina Spektor Oct. 17 – Gerard Butler/Shakira Given the slate of big-name albums coming out over the next couple of weeks, this list seems a bit odd, no? Among the missing big-name acts with new albums this fall who are notably absent: Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, Weezer, the SNL cast’s NBC colleagues The Roots. Heck, even Flight Of The Conchords would have been a good fit. Also notable is that the only act playing with a new album of new material scheduled for this fall is Shakira; otherwise you have one act that’s flogging an underperforming album and a PDA tie-in, one act that’s continually teetering on the precipice of annoying omnipresence, and one act who is fine enough, but will probably not inspire a lot of people to set their DVRs before heading out into the weekend wilderness. Oh well. If the Oct. 3 pairing results in a Van Wilder homage starring GaGa as Tara Reid, this may have been worth it. Gerard Butler: ‘Saturday Night Live’ Host! [Just Jared]