Saturday Night Live is collaborating with skincare company CeraVe in an apparent attempt to offend metalheads everywhere.
The American sketch comedy show has uploaded a new skit to Youtube casting two of its performers, Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang, as the frontpeople of ‘Naumore Dandruf’, a metal band who embarrassingly get dandruff everywhere when they headbang.
While admittedly not the worst premise for an ad promoting CeraVe’s new anti-dandruff shampoo (we metalheads do have lengthy locks), the execution is just… ew. The stars quickly resort to hard rock cliches, first talking to each other in mock angsty teenage tones. They then rally off cheesy 80s catchphrases and rhyming words instead of actual jokes. Because heavy metal existed in the 80s and has lyrics that sometimes rhyme? Or something?
“You got dandruff on my bass!” Yang’s character complains.
“You’re getting ’druff everywhere too, dingwad!” counters Sherman.
“Ugh! We got a big gig coming up and we keep getting ’druff on our stuff!”
“We got a big gig opening for Buff at Gruff’s and we keep getting ’druff on our stuff?!”
You get the idea. Anyway, it ends with their drummer giving them some CeraVe, then they play a song about “ditch[ing] the itch” and “feel[ing] real cool” and everyone watching prays for the last minute of their lives back.
Though it seems like the worlds of metal and mainstream advertising shouldn’t be healthy bedfellows (and they aren’t here), there have been a handful of legitimately great commercials featuring heavier music. In 1991, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson and mascot Eddie made an amusing ad for the US Department Of Transportation. Later, KFC had a legitimately funny campaign for a spicy chicken burger that showed it being too hot for even a fire-spewing black metal band to handle.
Saturday Night Live is currently celebrating 50 years on air. Documentary mini-series SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night is now streaming, a biographical comedy film about the programme called Saturday Night hit UK cinemas on January 31, and the show will mark its gold anniversary with a three-hour special on February 16. Hopefully it’ll be funnier than this.
