Source: Entertainment Weekly

Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker was winging it during his Saturday Night Live performance, and it didn’t take an astute observer to notice.

In a new interview, the singer and multi-instrumentalist admitted that he ad-libbed his way through the song “Borderline” when the band came to Studio 8H in 2019, serving as musical guests opposite host Sandra Oh. At the time, Parker had no choice but to embrace the “nowness” he felt.

“I didn’t have lyrics ready for the song that we played on SNL,” Parker said on The Zane Lowe Show. “I was up till 6 o’clock in the morning trying to record the song, and I just didn’t finish it. So to this day, ‘Borderline’s’ lyrics are mumbled on SNL. I’m just saying gibberish.”

Although, as a musician, he had some practice doing so.

“You know how artists do in the studio? Before they have lyrics, they just sing whatever?” Parker asked. “I did that on SNL.”

It wasn’t so much a creative decision as a necessity. Tame Impala first performed the song “Patience,” which had just been released as a single, but the second song they did wasn’t out yet.

“That shows just how much of a f‑‑‑ing mental state I was in at the moment. I didn’t care. Didn’t care,” Parker noted. “I was so preoccupied with the song and the album and everything else. I think Coachella was coming up then. It didn’t seem absurd to me that I was going to do that. I was like, ‘Oh, just sing whatever.’ I tell people that story, and they just don’t believe me. I have to show them the YouTube video.”

While prepping for their Saturday Night Live debut, Tame Impala had been required to submit their lyrics, and their tour manager later recalled to Parker that she had nothing. “She wrote something out,” he said. “I don’t remember what it was.”

It didn’t go unnoticed by the show that what Parker was supposed to sing and what came out of his mouth differed.

“She was like, ‘Yeah the crew came to me for dress rehearsal and they were like, this is not what he sang.’ I didn’t know this is all happening,” Parker said, noting that the tour manager wanted to keep him from worrying about it.

However, the rocker said things were calm despite the chaos. “It’s like every other late-night TV show we’ve played, it’s made me nervous as hell,” Parker said. “But SNL just had this tranquility. It’s like you’re playing to the people across America right now.”

In the end, the performance turned out just fine. “It was good,” Parker said. “I sang words.”

SNL, which just kicked off its 51st season, airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and streams on Peacock.

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