More than 25 years later, Christopher Walken’s “More Cowbell” sketch is still making plenty of noise.
The iconic Saturday Night Live sketch, which first aired in 2000, has now been voted the greatest SNL sketch of all time by fans, proving that some comedy only gets better with age.
The sketch famously imagines the fictional recording of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1976 hit “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” with Walken playing an unusually enthusiastic record producer who has one very specific request for drummer Will Ferrell’s fictional character: He needs more cowbell.
“I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell,” Walken’s character famously declares.
The sketch also featured Jimmy Fallon, Chris Parnell and Horatio Sanz, while Christina Aguilera appeared in the episode as the musical guest. The absurdity of the entire premise quickly turned the sketch into one of the show’s most memorable moments.
The ranking, published by LateNighter on Thursday, September 24, explained, “The premise is almost impossibly simple, but the execution keeps finding another gear: Ferrell’s full-body commitment, his bandmates’ mounting frustration, and Walken’s absolute conviction that the most intrusive part of the recording is also its most essential. “
“I don’t understand why it follows me around like it does,” Walken told Conan O’Brien in 2020. “It’s kind of run its course.
Ferrell told Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show that Walken told him he “ruined his life.”
Walken’s April 2000 performance narrowly beat out Christina Applegate’s “Midnight Oil” sketch from May 1993.