Paul McCartney Plays SNL Season 51 Finale, Chad Smith Hijacks Will Ferrell’s Monologue

6 sources covered this ⚠ Right-only compare →

Coverage of the event varies among outlets. Center-aligned sources like Consequence and Mashable focused on the comedic elements of Ferrell's monologue and the interaction with Chad Smith, while Page Six and Billboard emphasized how to…

May 17, 2026 · 3:14 PM UTC ·2 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 37 views

Paul McCartney Plays SNL Season 51 Finale, Chad Smith Hijacks Will Ferrell’s Monologue

#music #television #comedy

TL;DR · WeSearch summary

Paul McCartney was the musical guest on the season finale of SNL, marking his fifth appearance on the show. He performed songs from his upcoming album and a classic hit, with Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers filling in on drums. The episode featured comedic sketches, including a humorous interaction between Smith and host Will Ferrell.

Key facts

▪Paul McCartney performed on the season finale of SNL for the fifth time.
▪He played 'Days We Left Behind' and 'Band On The Run' during the show.
▪Chad Smith filled in for drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. and humorously impersonated Will Ferrell during the monologue.

How this story was covered

5 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 17 hours. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 3 centre, 1 right.

Centre · 3Right · 1

▪ Paul McCartney Jumps Into ‘SNL’ Monologue’s Will Ferrell/Chad Smith Joke — Billboard
▪ Will Ferrell confronts his look-alike during his SNL monologue — Mashable
▪ Will Ferrell’s SNL Monologue Hijacked by Doppelgänger Chad Smith — Consequence (of Sound)
▪ Will Ferrell hosts ‘SNL’ finale with Paul McCartney—Here’s how to watch for free — Page Six

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Stereogum files mainly under music. We currently carry 63 of its stories.

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Record

Original publisher	Stereogum
Canonical URL	https://stereogum.com/2499188/paul-mccartney-plays-snl-season-51-finale-chad-smith-hijacks-will-ferrells-monologue/news/
Publication time	Sun, 17 May 2026 15:14:44 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-05-17T15:33:20.772Z
Last seen	2026-05-17T15:33:20.772Z
Headline source	Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite)
Excerpt source	publisher body
Excerpt method	First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited.
Summary	WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer)
Summary source text	contentText
Citation coverage	Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL.
Cluster	eL88IDWf1mbp · 6 stories
Cluster logic	Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison.
Ranking reason	Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking.
Publisher visit	Yes — open original
Substitutes article?	No — link-out required for full text

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Unknown

Retrieval and training permissions are not asserted unless the publisher confirms them.

WeSearch handling by dimension

Indexing	May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)?	Allowed
Snippet	May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown?	Allowed
AI summary	May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article?	Limited
Retrieval / RAG	May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation?	Not asserted
Model training	May the content be used to train AI models?	Not asserted
Commercial reuse	May the content be reused commercially?	Not permitted

Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.

Open original publisher → Source rights JSON → Machine-readable provenance → Rights framework → WESEARCH-STORY-PROVENANCE-V1

Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand

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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Stereogum.

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