Cher closed out the final Saturday Night Live of 2025 with two tracks from her 2023 Christmas album.
The pop icon, who had been an SNL musical guest only once before, opened with the up-tempo “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” one of the original songs on the album.
Her only Christmas album—and 27th overall—also includes a duet with Darlene Love on “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” and appearances by Stevie Wonder, Michael Bublé, Tyga and Cyndi Lauper.
They say age is just a number, and two superstars making high-profile TV appearances this month on programs that traditionally cater to young audiences prove the point. (Billboard)
When Cher appears as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live on Saturday, she’ll make a little history. At 79, she’ll be the second-oldest musical guest in the show’s 50-year-plus history. Ragtime pianist Eubie Blake was 92 when he was the musical guest (alongside Gregory Hines) on the March 19, 1979, show.
Blake had a late-in-life resurgence in popularity thanks to the 1978-79 Broadway musical Eubie!, which showcased his ebullient songs, such as “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Shuffle Along.” Cher, by contrast, has just always been there, never far removed from a hit record, TV show, movie or tour in the more than 60 years she has been a star. Earlier today, the Recording Academy announced that she will receive a lifetime achievement award at their Special Merit Awards ceremony on Jan. 31, the afternoon before the 68th Grammy Awards.
On Dec. 31, Diana Ross will be the headline attraction on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest. She’ll perform live from Times Square near midnight, when the show’s audience is at its peak. (Carrie Underwood filled that prime spot on last year’s show.) Ross is 81, a shade older than Cher, and in the same way, she has been a welcome part of our lives since the 1960s.
