Time For SNL To Get More Diverse Musical Guests

The latest selection of musical guests for SNL can be seen as two ways: It's engaging with a group of musicians they feel is diverse and really gets acclimated with the times we live on. On the other hand, many feel that SNL has not gone far enough with its diverse selections. Now, it may be changing.

On the most recent episode of SNL, they announced that the musical guest for the March 28, 2020 will be Dua Lipa, a singer and songwriter from England and also one of the more popular up-and-coming singers we are seeing rise to the occasion, and that's good.

Why am I bringing this up, you may ask? For the last few weeks or so, a friend of mine and myself have been discussing why SNL has had a lack of girl pop in recent episodes. Think about it: We've had Luke Combs, David Byrne, and Justin Bieber all perform on SNL fairly recently. As you can tell, they are not female performers, and especially not under girl pop. My friend chalked this up to arrogance on the part of NBC, and especially since NBC has come under fire recently with its scandals involving Matt Lauer and Jeremy Roenick, respectively, although in different situations.

That brings me to another point: While NBC has tried hard to get a more diverse group of musical guests into their lineup, I feel that there is still work to be done. Yes, we've had Lizzo and Halsey recently as well, but there's certainly a bigger group of girl pop musicians that could really have their careers improved by being on SNL. Dua Lipa is going to have that opportunity on the 28th and I really hope she does well because I think people like her can really set the stage and allow more musicians to flourish and be successful.

When it comes to diversity, it means you should go all-out diverse. It means you need to approach people who are white, black, autistic, female, male, etc. You need to have a wide variety of musicians and selections to choose from, not just those in a little window. It looks like they're getting the message clearly with Dua Lipa coming aboard. The question now is: Will they be able to keep this going and allow more girl pop to be welcomed onto SNL? We'll see.