Lady Gaga has received a wave of praise after serving double duty on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, as both host and musical guest.

The Abracadabra singer has appeared on SNL as guest host and musical performer on numerous occasions in the last 15 years (more on that in a second), but Saturday marked her first time occupying both slots, following in the footsteps of Charli XCX and Timothée Chalamet, who also juggled both roles recently.

Here’s a selection of highlights and other stand-out moments from Gaga’s big night at SNL…

First of all, the best thing to come out of the whole episode was this performance of Abracadabra

Talk about doing the most with a limited amount of space.

Seriously, the above video is a must-watch for even the most casual of Lady Gaga fans, encompassing everything we love about her as a live performer.

Gaga poked fun at her recent Razzie win in her opening monologue

Although she was there to promote her new album, Gaga couldn’t resist poking fun at the scathing reviews her last film Joker: Folie À Deux received towards the end of last year.

“Apparently, people thought it was awesome,” she quipped, before addressing the fact that she and co-star Joaquin Phoenix had just won the Golden Raspberry Award in the Worst On-Screen Duo category.

“The joke’s on them. I love winning things!” Gaga said.

“My Razzie brings me one step closer to an EGORT. It’s like an EGOT, but it’s hurtful.”

She ended the segment by vowing to “sing”, “dance” and “not do Joker 3”.

She also used her monologue to address one particular elephant in the room

While reflecting on her past appearances on SNL, she revealed that last time she hosted, she was joined during one performance by R Kelly, who is currently serving a 31-year combined sentence for multiple charges involving child sexual abuse, trafficking and racketeering.

She explained: “I’m so happy to be back at SNL. The last time I hosted was in 2013. And every aspect of my performance aged amazingly.

“Because there’s no need to Google ‘SNL 2013 Lady Gaga featuring R Kelly.’ I won’t bring it up!” 

In 2019, following the release of the documentary Surviving R Kelly, Gaga pulled their duet Do What U Want from streaming services, and apologised for having collaborated with him on the song six years prior.

She wrote at the time: “I stand behind these women 1000%, believe them, know they are suffering and in pain, and feel strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously.

“What I am hearing about the allegations against R Kelly is absolutely horrifying and indefensible. As a victim of sexual assault myself, I made both the song and video [the latter of which was never released] at a dark time in my life, my intention was to create something extremely defiant and provocative because I was angry and still hadn’t processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life. The song is called Do What U Want (With My Body), I think it’s clear how explicitly twisted my thinking was at the time.

“If I could go back and have a talk with my younger self I’d tell her to go through the therapy I have since then, so that I could understand the confused post-traumatic state that I was in or if therapy was not available to me or anyone in my situation – to seek help, and speak as openly and honestly as possible about what we’ve been through.”

She added: “I can’t go back, but I can go forward and continue to support women, men, and people of all sexual identities, and of all races, who are victims of sexual assault. I have demonstrated my stance on this issue and others many times throughout my career.”

Gaga concluded: “I’m sorry, both for my poor judgment when I was young, and for not speaking out sooner.”

SNL comedy sketches are always a bit hit-and-miss, let’s be honest, but we enjoyed this parody mascara commercial

“It never runs,” Chloe Fineman said of the fictional mascara, to which Heidi Gardner responded: “But sometimes, don’t you kind of want it to?”

“You know… for the attention,” Gaga then added, in one of the episode’s most note-perfect deliveries.

The fact that Gaga herself is now a makeup mogul as the founder of Haus Labs just adds to the fun.

Gaga also had a musical moment with Bowen Yang

We can only imagine how excited Gaga superfan and SNL cast member Bowen Yang will have been to get to do this “performance” with the pop icon.

In this skit, the pair played a wealthy couple on a date who perform an impromptu duet of Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight, only for things to take an increasingly chaotic turn as each verse continues.

Gaga takes on her next major acting role in... Pip

In the latest in SNL’s “Midnight Matinee” movie parodies, Gaga plays a high school student in Pip, about a Stuart Little-esque mouse who tries to win a weight lifting tournament to prove himself to his classmates.

Watch till the end, as we promise this is a much more shocking – and, indeed, blood-spattered – ending than whatever you imagined.

And finally – this Killah performance more than lived up to its name

So, while one of Gaga’s performances saw her using her imagination to make the most of an enclosed space, the other took a very different approach.

While performing Mayhem cut Killah, Gaga and her dancers kicked things off in the SNL corridors, wandering around the studio and delivering some impressive choreo around the NBC building, before finally making it onto the show’s main stage.

Gaga has always been known for her “more is more” approach, and that was certainly the case with this rendition of Killah, which encompasses dancing, a drum solo and even an unexpected costume change.

Killah, indeed!

Oh, and this didn’t actually happen during the episode, but how fab are these photos of Gaga and Pip after the show?

Amazing.