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Emmys 2012: Watch Jimmy Fallon’s 10 Best Musical Moments of the Year

The 64th Primetime Emmy nominations came out this morning, and Best Variety Series yielded not one but two nods for sketch comedian-turned-late night host Jimmy Fallon. Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live, which he hosted in December, will be competing against The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. As Billboard points out, music-centric shows, like American Idol and Glee, were pretty much left in the dust this year (with the exception of The Voice), so to highlight how music played a role in this year’s TV world — and to kill time while Fallon and his crew sober up from their early morning celebrations — allow us to provide a chronological compendium of the host’s best music-related sketches over the past year:

  1. July 2011: Justin Timberlake and Fallon Revive Awesome Rap Sketch — Continuing what they started in 2010 when they began their attempt to get through the entire history of rap in one gigantic medley.
  2. https://www.youtube.com/embed/k3rCLtXm4oc

  3. October 2011: Bonus Round! Timberlake and Fallon Make it 53 Songs into History of Rap — NBC has wiped the Internet clean of embeddable versions of this particular performance, so watch the third installment of this watershed late-night gag here.
  4. November 2011: The Roots Welcome Michele Bachmann Onstage with the Song ‘Lyin’ Ass Bitch’: — as embarrassing as this was afterwards for ?uestlove and the gang to admit the gag and apologize to the former presidential candidate, it was a pretty monumental moment in late-night history.
  5. https://www.youtube.com/embed/d3iyADAmd8Q

  6. December 2011: Beethoven Introduces His “Band” (SNL Hosting Gig) — just a good look all around for classical music.
  7. December 2011: The Bublé Duets Sketch (SNL Hosting Gig) — the Bieber impression that launched a thousand Bieber impressions.
  8. February 2012: “Eddie Vedder” Sings “Jeremy (Lin)” — we apologize to all recently devastated Knicks fans for having to include this one.
  9. March 2012: March 2012: Bruce Springsteen and Fallon as Neil Young Cover LMFAO “Sexy and I Know It” — No embeddable video, but click here to watch this glorious follow-up to the pair’s Willow Smith cover back in 2010.
  10. April 2012: President Barack Obama Finally Collaborates With the Roots (The Slow-Jam the News Episode) — way better than McCain’s 2008 SNL appearance.
  11. July 2012: Fallon Hosts Frank Ocean’s Late Night Debut — for reasons pretty obvious by now, Ocean’s performance of “Bad Religion” on Fallon earlier this month would certainly be included if there were such a thing as a Late-Night Criterion Collection.
  12. (Honorable Mention) July 2012: James Murphy Plays the Guitar Onstage for the First Time in 20 Years — this one is just an honorable mention because the performance video hasn’t actually been included in NBC’s video of the interview Murphy gave, in advance of Shut Up and Play the Hits‘ premiere yesterday, but watch the interview anyway, because it’s great and educational.