Let’s all guess how much Tidal, a streaming service which I, like many Americans, forget exists until Kanye tweets about it, paid off the writers at Saturday Night Live to create a sketch that namedrops them a bunch while a famous performer sings in the background. Just kidding. (Mostly.)
In the March 12 sketch, Ariana Grande plays a severely frightened-looking intern who roams the halls of Tidal’s HQ, whose decor mostly resembles Vladimir Putin’s favorite interrogation room. After a mishap happens in the control room and some of the streams go down, it’s up to Grande to step in and sing like each performer, because that’s how streaming works?
Most of Grande’s impressions are completely on fleek, as the youths say: her Britney Spears imitation captures that twangy nasal quality that Brit Brit possesses, and all her Celine Dion needs is an appropriate, violent chest pound. Her Shakira mimicry gives her a chance to correct a misconception when Jay Pharoah’s character profiles her as “Hispanic” (which apparently means she can sing like her?); as Ariana says, “That’s a common mistake, I’m actually just very Italian”). And her Whitney Houston? Damn.
Grande’s Rihanna impression didn’t fair as well—I imagine it resembles what a fish having a seizure must look like—but that’s on purpose: Grande admits in the sketch that she “doesn’t know what [Rihanna’s] saying” in the song “Work,” which is also a thing? I guess?
Contact the author at jamie.reich@jezebel.com.
Image via NBC/YouTube.