Bad Bunny performs on SNL on Oct. 21, 2023.

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Bad Bunny performs on SNL on Oct. 21, 2023.

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Saturday Night Live‘s 49th season was a typically mixed bag, as the show continued to adjust to cast departures, the relentless pace of current events and the usual constraints and limitations of live TV. At least the 2023-’24 season wasn’t truncated by outside factors, be they COVID-19 or last year’s Writers Guild of America strike.

Season 49 also featured an array of musical guests that included massive stars and up-and-comers alike — each of whom is about to get ranked with bloodless scientific precision, in ascending order of quality, based in part on their ability to withstand Studio 8H’s notoriously unforgiving sound mixes. This is our seventh straight year doing this (here’s 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018), so consider this ranking to be not so much one man’s subjective opinion as incontrovertible truth.

That said, we’ve linked to every performance that’s still (legally) posted on YouTube, and every one of these sets is available for streaming via Peacock in case you wish to double-check my work. You know, for science.

20. Ice Spice, “In Ha Mood” and “Pretty Girl (feat. Rema)” (10/14/23)

Ice Spice and Rema.

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Ice Spice and Rema.

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Ice Spice has been a welcome presence on countless pop singles in the past few years, but her laid-back style — low in the mix, with little wasted motion — doesn’t lend itself to onstage dynamism. Aside from a bit of half-speed hip-swiveling, her debut as an SNL headliner amounted to little more than a vibe: coy, lightly suggestive, vaguely indifferent.

She was also extremely ill-served by a muddy sound mix — as well as rote, thudding backing tracks — that threatened to drown her out completely. And that was before Ice Spice returned for “Pretty Girl,” in which guest Rema (due for his own SNL headlining spot, but also mixed way too quietly here) showed up to assume the lion’s share of vocal duties. Ice Spice has charisma, star power and famous friends — Taylor Swift even popped up to introduce her the second time around — but these sluggish two-minute performances felt like afterthoughts even as they were happening.

19. Jennifer Lopez, “Can’t Get Enough (feat. Latto & Redman)” and “This Is Me… Now” (2/3/24)

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Jennifer Lopez.

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These two performances of songs from Jennifer Lopez’s weird, misbegotten concept album This Is Me… Now presented two sides of the same lavish spectacle. “Can’t Get Enough” fed us the chaotic side, complete with guest raps from Latto and Redman, plus lots of Lopez kicking at the camera as the lights behind her flickered and raged. The gloopy title track, on the other hand, fed us a cloying diet of gigantic roses and clouds of pink smoke, as portions of Lopez’s nude form peeked out from behind a flower sculpture that resembled nothing if not a bulging heap of meringue.

Neither song ranked among Lopez’s choicest cuts to begin with, but at least “Can’t Get Enough” had energy to lean on. “This Is Me… Now,” on the other hand, called for absolute stillness, and not just due to the considerable risk of wardrobe malfunction; consequently, all the pressure landed on Lopez to oversell the vocal. The result felt deadly dull and old-fashioned — a would-be showstopper that landed with a big wet plop.

18. Kacey Musgraves, “Deeper Well” and “Too Good to Be True” (3/2/24)

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Kacey Musgraves.

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In this year of pop-cultural grievance, Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well hits like a welcome antidote: a softly rendered self-help reflection on ways to recover, repair and otherwise emerge from destructive patterns. It’s not, however, the stuff of onstage rambunctiousness.

So while Musgraves returned to SNL accompanied by a fully-stocked band, it was still — as in the late-night performances that accompanied her moodily undercooked 2021 album star-crossed — hard to get sucked into these motion-resistant performances. Trading the tastefully concealed nudity of her last SNL set for a folksier quilted bathrobe, the singer did a nice job conveying the hard-earned wisdom of “Deeper Well.” But “Too Good to Be True” barely registered on a disappointingly low-energy night.

17. Reneé Rapp, “Snow Angel” and “Not My Fault (feat. Megan Thee Stallion)” (1/20/24)

Renée Rapp, accompanied by Megan Thee Stallion.

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Renée Rapp, accompanied by Megan Thee Stallion.

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Not just anyone gets to be a headlining musical guest on SNL: Those spots are almost exclusively reserved for major stars in pop, hip-hop, R&B, rock, Latin music and country. But exceptions can be made for lesser-known performers who just happen to star in new films produced by SNL‘s Lorne Michaels. Michaels really wanted you to see the film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the 2004 film Mean Girls, so he booked star Reneé Rapp to perform a pair of songs: one from Rapp’s 2023 album Snow Angel and one from Mean Girls‘ closing credits.

Rapp herself does fine, but the sound mix makes an absolute hash of her vocals; for all its musical-theater staging, it’s hard to make out more than a few words of “Snow Angel.” “Not My Fault” fares a bit better, in part due to the presence of A-list ringer Megan Thee Stallion, who gamely turns up for a guest verse. Still, just four months removed from this performance, it already invites the question, “Why was this on SNL again?” Synergy, baby!

16. 21 Savage, “redrum” and “should’ve wore a bonnet (feat. Brent Faiyaz)”https://www.npr.org/”prove it (feat. Summer Walker)” (2/24/24)

21 Savage.

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21 Savage.

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21 Savage gets points for working a fair bit of collaboration into his performances: “redrum” placed him in the middle of a smokily lit scene populated by a violinist, two singers handling the hook and two black-clad ballerinas, while his medley of “should’ve wore a bonnet” and “prove it” brought in vocal ringers Brent Faiyaz and Summer Walker, respectively.

The problem is that Savage himself rarely seemed invested in being there. It’s hard to miss, for example, how much of the first song consisted of the rapper standing around and listlessly chanting “redrum” while everyone in his vicinity compensated with maximal energy. As for the medley, it was nice to see the SNL spotlight shine on Faiyaz and Walker, but the low-energy headliner couldn’t help but get lost in the din of it all.

15. Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso” and “Feather”https://www.npr.org/”Nonsense” (5/18/24)

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Sabrina Carpenter.

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Sabrina Carpenter is an actress and former Disney Channel star who’s riding the pop charts with a cryptically worded earworm called “Espresso.” If that’s all you knew of Carpenter going into her SNL debut, her two performances — of “Espresso,” naturally, but also a medley of her songs “Feather” and “Nonsense” — were there to tell you that she’s also extremely aware of her haters.

In the opening frame of her performance of “Espresso,” newspaper headlines screamed about Carpenter while making light of the song’s puzzling grammar. (See? She knows!) Then, her conversational asides in the medley — “I’m on SNL and you’re not!” — seemed engineered to dull the sting of critiques that hadn’t even been written yet.

By the end of “Nonsense,” Carpenter seemed to lose steam, vocally, but her notes of defiance weren’t terribly necessary to begin with. There’s nothing wrong with just being fun, especially this year, and Carpenter is a welcome, agreeable presence, on the pop charts and beyond.

14. Billie Eilish, “What Was I Made For?” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (12/16/23)

Billie Eilish, accompanied by Finneas.

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Billie Eilish, accompanied by Finneas.

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Billie Eilish has a history of dominating SNL‘s Studio 8H with inventive staging that maximizes the space around her. This Barbie– and holiday-themed set was bound to be more subdued than that, though, as neither “What Was I Made For?” nor “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” call for much in the way of motion.

Instead, this set placed Eilish in mournful-chanteuse mode and left her there alongside her brother, Finneas (on the piano), and for the holiday number, guest bassist Christian McBride. Vocally, she did a typically lovely job, though she does get dinged half a point for going with “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough” instead of “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” We “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” stans are sticklers that way.

13. Travis Scott, “MY EYES” and “FE!N (feat. Playboi Carti)” (3/30/24)

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Travis Scott.

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Give Travis Scott credit: The man is willing to attempt some big swings. Take his SNL performance of “MY EYES,” which opened with the rapper lying in repose as a Bon Iver sample rolled behind him. Giving the track time to build, Scott hung back as the song bloomed into something disorienting and wild and full of motion — in its lighting, in the screened projections behind him and in his own frenetic physical presence.

Then, in “FE!N,” that willingness to experiment took him almost entirely off the rails. Thanks to thick smoke, strobe lights and herky-jerky camera motions — courtesy of a pair of hydraulic arms that swung wildly and kept pulling Scott and guest Playboi Carti out of frame — the song was rendered almost entirely incoherent, both sonically and visually. At one point, the only clear image on the screen was of one of Carti’s white boots, which … wasn’t a lot to go on.

12. Chris Stapleton, “White Horse” and “Mountains of My Mind” (4/13/24)

Chris and Morgane Stapleton.

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Chris and Morgane Stapleton.

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Chris Stapleton has built a tremendous career — and won countless awards — working from a foundation of no-frills, guitar-forward country-rock. But while that sturdy songcraft makes Stapleton one of the most reliably compelling figures in modern music, a resistance to stagecraft can make it harder for SNL performances to reach towering heights.

Instead, Stapleton settled for cranking out two absolutely stellar songs — one with his band (“White Horse”) and one with just an acoustic guitar (“Mountains of My Mind”). The former labored to overcome an iffy sound mix — Stapleton’s wife, Morgane, was almost inaudible — but the latter song got stripped down enough to let listeners hang on the singer’s every word. Sometimes, shining a light on exceptional raw material is enough.

11. Justin Timberlake, “Sanctified (feat. Tobe Nwigwe)” and “Selfish” (1/27/24)

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Justin Timberlake.

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Justin Timberlake is nothing if not a committed maximalist — this is, after all, a guy who turned up at the Tiny Desk backed by 14 other musicians — and that commitment to grandiosity served him exceptionally well in his SNL performance of “Sanctified.” The arrangement leaned on take-’em-to-church energy from the jump, but the whole thing got more viscerally exciting as it went along — especially once Tobe Nwigwe and a team of dancers showed up for a full-blown strobe-lit spectacle.

“Selfish,” on the other hand … hoo boy. You could make a strong case that it’s the most uneventful single of Timberlake’s solo career, and it was done no favors by flat staging that stranded the singer at the center of it all. Timberlake is a superstar, no question, but the vibes here were giving “low-energy Robin Thicke.”

So there you have it: dizzying highs, deadening lows and nothing in between. There isn’t much choice, then, but to grade this one squarely in the middle.

10. Bad Bunny, “UN PREVIEW” and “MONACO” (10/21/23)

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Bad Bunny.

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Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny pulled double duty as musical guest and host, which can often lead to scaled-down performances. In the case of “UN PREVIEW,” that held true, as the artist rapped over a prerecorded track in front of a spare white set and a gyrating mechanical rocking horse — visually striking yet not terribly memorable, unless you really like gyrating mechanical rocking horses.

For “MONACO,” the production value improved considerably, as Bad Bunny sat on a table while flanked by a frenetic coterie of seated, bug-masked dancers. A pair of string players even helped flesh out the instrumentation — a step up from the rote backing beats of “UN PREVIEW” — but neither performance made the absolute most of Bad Bunny’s weapons-grade star power.

9. Foo Fighters, “Rescued” and “The Glass (feat. H.E.R.)” (10/28/23)

Foo Fighters and special guest H.E.R.

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Foo Fighters and special guest H.E.R.

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It feels silly to refer to a Foo Fighters appearance on SNL as “long-awaited,” given that Dave Grohl’s band has been a featured musical guest nine times in the past three decades. But this was actually a makeup date, as the group was supposed to close out the previous season, before said season got truncated by the Writers Guild of America strike.

Even six months later, Foo Fighters’ performance of “Rescued” and “The Glass” marked the band’s first TV appearance since the death of Taylor Hawkins in 2022. And, given the themes of the group’s newest album — last year’s excellent But Here We Are reflects on the loss of not only Hawkins, but also Grohl’s mother — the band invested this performance with considerable, long-pent-up emotion.

Surrounded by vintage electronics — low-tech radar screens, black-and-white TVs, that sort of thing — Foo Fighters’ members bashed their way through “Rescued” with abandon, as Grohl pushed the limits of even his own vein-bulging intensity. “The Glass” felt more contained, bringing in H.E.R. to lend the band a fourth guitar (complete with solo) and transform the song into a ragged but moving duet. Not unforgettable, but solid, for sure.

8. Dua Lipa, “Illusion” and “Happy for You” (5/4/24)

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Dua Lipa.

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Dua Lipa may have inspired the “go girl, give us nothing” meme, but she’s evolved into a flashy stage performer who’s unafraid of cardio-intensive choreo. Aided by a phalanx of men in mesh tank tops, “Illusion” went all-in on synchronized grinding, complete with body rolls. Though the overall effect felt a little robotic, it’s difficult to argue with the effort level.

“Happy for You,” which closes Lipa’s new album, Radical Optimism, didn’t go quite as hard on the SNL stage, but that’s not all bad: A refreshingly generous breakup song, the track stood up well to the sparkly staging Lipa gave it. Flinging her hair against a barrage of smoky white high beams, the singer looked and sounded for all the world like an icon of dramatically lit magnanimity.

7. Vampire Weekend, “Gen-X Cops” and “Capricorn” (5/11/24)

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Vampire Weekend.

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On paper, Vampire Weekend’s assignment didn’t seem tough: Veteran rock bands on the SNL stage are generally expected to bypass the high-tech stagecraft expected of younger pop, hip-hop and R&B stars. But Vampire Weekend’s fifth album, Only God Was Above Us, doesn’t translate to the stage easily, with complex, unsettled, frequently abrasive songs that pour on the clutter.

Praise is due, then, for pulling off the new tracks “Gen-X Cops” and “Capricorn” without sacrificing their layered intricacy. It helps that the band filled the stage with supporting players to help bring these tracks to life, and it’s a testament to Vampire Weekend’s diligence that everyone involved stayed on the right side of the blurry line between “ornate” and “chaotic.” Ezra Koenig’s vocals didn’t always pop the way they should, but he and his band pulled off performances that were considerably trickier than they may have looked.

6. Tate McRae, “greedy” and “grave” (11/18/23)

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Tate McRae.

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Canadian pop singer and dancer Tate McRae first achieved prominence as a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance, so it’s only natural that she’d lean into physicality in her SNL debut. Clad in short shorts and a small cape made out of what appeared to be tattered rags, McRae performed her ubiquitous hit, “greedy,” on a set of bleachers, flanked by dancers in an arrangement that poured on the choreography — particularly later on, when McRae handed off the mic for a positively gymnastic bit of solo gyration.

It’s a performance that scored maximum points for effort, while still standing on its own, vocally. The ballad “grave” proved less eventful, as it brought McRae to a literal standstill, but by then, she’d already demonstrated that she belonged on that stage.

5. Noah Kahan, “Dial Drunk” and “Stick Season” (12/2/23)

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Noah Kahan.

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Remember that scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home where a portal opened and a bunch of the villains from past Spider-Man movies poured out? We’re having a moment like that in music, except replace “villains” with “earnest, oft-bearded folk singers” and “past Spider-Man movies” with “a folk-rock sound that was hugely popular a decade ago.” Noah Kahan, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims … heck, Hozier is back! Mumford & Sons released a new single earlier this year; this is not a coincidence, people.

Kahan offers a winningly gregarious variation on this new old sound, and his SNL debut leaned hard on the stomp-and-clap agreeability of it all. You want a banjo? We’ve got a banjo! You want man-of-the-woods set dressing? The sticks dangling from the ceiling are there to threaten everyone in sight with impalement from above! This folk-pop sound had left the public’s consciousness for a while, and both “Dial Drunk” and “Stick Season” could hardly be catchier, so … why not? Kahan is your lovable-everyman time traveler, here to remind you that 2012 wasn’t too bad in hindsight.

4. Ariana Grande, “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” and “imperfect for you” (3/9/24)

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Ariana Grande.

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If you’re among those who left Ariana Grande’s recent album, eternal sunshine, feeling underwhelmed — if its synth-pop airiness crossed a line into seeming lightweight — then these performances ought to help bring its themes and charms into focus. It helps that each song was accompanied by a visual feast, as vast screens conjured up vivid plant life, celestial wonders and, during a particularly striking moment in “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” an all-engulfing tidal wave. Grande was essentially performing in front of the most awe-inspiring karaoke backdrop of all time, but damned if it didn’t work beautifully.

Just as importantly, her voice has grown deeper and richer over time: Grande’s been working in musical theater, not to mention filming the Wicked movies, and that experience has clearly carried over to her day job. It wasn’t just the special effects that made the stage seem bigger than it was.

3. RAYE, “Escapism.” and “Worth It.” (4/6/24)

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There’s an everything-everywhere-all-at-once quality to the music of British pop star RAYE, who dominated this year’s BRIT Awards and has been breaking out in the U.S. after writing hits for the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna. RAYE’s own songs mash together elements of jazz, blues, R&B, gospel and timeless big-band pop, with grand arrangements that make use of strings, horns and choirs.

It’s a lot to digest, and she brought every scrap of it to her SNL debut: “Escapism.” and “Worth It.” each made full use of a small city’s worth of supporting players. But at their center was the rich voice, impeccable style and easy charisma of RAYE herself. Given its strength as a promotional vehicle for huge stars, SNL doesn’t get a chance to feature many discoveries. But for those who might still be unfamiliar with RAYE, this marked a grand introduction.

2. Olivia Rodrigo, “vampire” and “all-american b****” (12/9/23)

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Olivia Rodrigo.

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Sometimes, artists pour all their creative resources into their first SNL song of the night, then dial it back for a closer that feels like a time-filler. Not so with Olivia Rodrigo, who led with a stately, piano-forward reading of her hit “vampire” before committing to full-on berserkitude in “all-american b****,” complete with a stomped cake and a ruined dress.

As with much of Rodrigo’s catalog so far, it’s easy to draw a straight line from this reading of “all-american b****” to a footnoted catalog of alt-rock influences — in this case Courtney Love, whose odes to trashed beauty are emulated with perfectionist precision. But it’s hard to argue with the result, which pairs brash theatrics with a vocal that’s unmistakably on-point. Rodrigo is great at this.

1. boygenius, “Not Strong Enough” and “Satanist” (11/11/23)

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In a performance that checked every box, boygenius came to SNL armed with high-concept presentation — Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus dressed as The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, complete with a Beatles-esque logo on the kick drum — as well as a pogoing backing band, wicked ear-to-ear grins, flinging hair, the occasional light show and, in the case of “Not Strong Enough,” the best song of 2023. How could this set not work?

Aside from a muffled vocal here and there, this was a master class in how to maximize the SNL stage while having an absolute blast in the process. All it needed was a guitar flung into the abyss, and Baker checked that box with a vengeance at the close of “Satanist.” Every imaginable mission: accomplished.

Los Angeles tends to strike outsiders as a borderless mishmash of suburbs spread over an unfriendly landscape with no significant natural source of water. When it’s not on fire, it seems to be sliding into the ocean or collapsing under the weight of its own untamable development.

And yet Los Angeles transplants will still brag to their loved ones across the country that they could go skiing and surfing in the same day (if for some reason they felt so inclined). As the conservationist Craig Stanford reminds us, however, you don’t have to drive to Big Bear or the beach to feel the pulse of nature in L.A.

In “Unnatural Habitat: The Native and Exotic Wildlife of Los Angeles,” Stanford offers Angelenos — and anyone interested in the function and dysfunction of (sub)urban ecosystems — a guide to the natural life that teems beneath our freeways, wanders into our backyards and fights for survival in the deserts and mountains that surround our city.

Stanford, who has conducted field research around the world, lives in Pasadena, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As he details more than 150 species of L.A. flora and fauna — from native mountain lions to exotic earthworms, weeds that occur naturally and palm trees that, surprisingly, don’t — he evokes a portrait of an unusual city’s special, bizarre and unexpectedly fragile wildlife. He conjures up evolutionary histories, stories of foreign species’ arrival and their effects on an ecosystem that is massively and continuously altered by human influence.

But Stanford’s mission here isn’t simply to describe the creatures at hand — though he does do plenty of that, never hesitating to anthropomorphize even the most inhuman of them; to him, snakes are “secretive,” tarantulas “ominously deliberate.” The book excels — feels necessary, even — when it unravels the intricate interplay between human and animal habits; societal institutions and nature; common sense and our desire to decorate and navigate Los Angeles however we please.

He also offers prescriptions, micro and macro, private and public, for better stewardship of our environs. We can decide what we plant in our own gardens, for example, so Stanford advises readers to fill their yards with something native and drought-tolerant that can contribute to a more robust, stable and diverse ecosystem. (Of course, most of our city’s residents probably won’t get the memo.)

On the public front, Stanford highlights potential institutional improvements as well as bureaucratic roadblocks. In what is perhaps the book’s most compelling chapter, he writes about the man-made challenges to L.A.’s mountain lions. The gravest threat to these magnificent animals is our ubiquitous freeway system: Since 2015, more than 500 California cougars have become roadkill. Perhaps anyone could guess as much, but what a layman might never know without Stanford’s book is that our busy roads severely circumscribe the territory cougars can roam, leading to isolation and inbreeding.

A wildlife crossing is under construction over the 101 to allow cougars to traverse the freeway safely, expanding the territory they can access. But the cost of the project is high (about $90 million), as is competition for land that might otherwise serve as sanctuary for wildlife. Stanford, who usually comes across as optimistic, can wax cynical in the face of such frustrations.

His unexpected insights range from comical to shocking. He offers a snapshot of his cat having a field day with the finches in his backyard birdbath — and then explains the vicious cycle that creates invasive populations of feral cats that kill literally billions of birds across North America every year.

Stanford’s self-proclaimed ecological purism doesn’t mean he believes we should do away with nonnative species altogether, though. In fact, human interference has helped many species worth keeping around. Hummingbirds, for example, stay in L.A. year-round because our backyard feeders preclude any need for them to migrate in search of sugary plants. With that comes the responsibility to care for the wildlife we cultivate in this landscape that he acknowledges is “beautiful but largely nonfunctional.” It’s not clear whether he thinks we’re up to the task.

At his best, Stanford interweaves vivid prose, a reverence for nature and a seasoned Angeleno’s eye for what makes this city unique. At times, however, he fails to draw a connection between a species and the city, punctuating the book with vignettes laden with contextless taxonomy.

Regardless, the overall effect is a worthy and illuminating entry in the tradition of works exploring urbanization’s effect on the environment. (Stanford references Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” and that author’s influence is felt throughout his book.) Moral questions abound, ranging from animal rights to humanity’s role in nature. Stanford’s fundamental message is clear and simple (and oft-repeated): To preserve a Los Angeles in which humans and nature benefit from one another, we must increase our understanding of our city’s fragile wildlife mosaic.

Stanford is heavy-handed only when he has to be, and his subtlety often hits harder. One chapter concerns a succulent so common in Los Angeles that I never knew its name: It’s called the live-forever (genus Dudleya), and, ironically, it’s at risk of extinction due to poaching. You can buy the plants at Home Depot, and yet they’re disappearing from our cliff faces and hiking paths. At the chapter’s close, Stanford articulates a profoundly upsetting truth: “Each generation grows up accustomed to the scope of Nature that surrounds it.”

Despite all he has to say about it, L.A.’s biodiversity is waning before our eyes. Fortunately, with Stanford’s help, we can acquire some of his vision for preserving our native species while effectively introducing exotic ones. Los Angeles is, after all, a city of transplants.

Daniel Vitale is a writer in Los Angeles and the author of the novel “Orphans of Canland.”

Michael McDonald, 72, describes his voice as a “malleable” instrument: “Especially with age, it’s like you’re constantly renegotiating with it.”

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Michael McDonald, 72, describes his voice as a “malleable” instrument: “Especially with age, it’s like you’re constantly renegotiating with it.”

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Even Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Michael McDonald says he feels like an imposter sometimes.

“I don’t mean to be self-deprecating when I say this, but I never really understood why people gave me so much credit as a musician,” McDonald says. “I really am just, more or less, a songwriter who plays a little bit of piano.”

It’s an understatement. McDonald’s singular sound that has captivated audiences for generations and has given life to remixes, remakes and thousands of impressions from Tonight Show skits to The Voice.

His new memoir, What A Fool Believes, which he co-wrote with comedian Paul Reiser, chronicles McDonald’s childhood in Ferguson, MO., his early years as a session musician and his decades-long career as a member of Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers and as a solo artist.

Throughout his career, McDonald was known for crossover hits. His 1982 single, “I Keep Forgettin’,” cracked the top 10 of Billboard’s Pop, R&B and Adult Contemporary charts, and was later sampled by hip-hop artists Warren G and Nate Dogg in their 1994 hit, “Regulate.”

McDonald says that earlier in his career, he tended to avoid writing about himself directly in songs. But looking back now, he’s noticed a shift in his music, which he attributes, in part, to becoming sober in the mid 1980s.

“More than anything, I think what people who suffer from addiction share universally is that we’re kind of hiding from ourselves. We’re kind of hiding from our feelings,” he says. “I’ve learned in sobriety to slowly peel back different layers.”

Interview highlights

Jim Shea/Brian Moore/Sacks & Co.

Jim Shea/Brian Moore/Sacks & Co.

On his first band, Mike and the Majestics

It was Mike and the Majestics, and I soon got demoted, and it was just the Majestics. We started when we were all around 12. I think our first gigs happened more like when I was 13. And the other guys were a year and two older than me.

Back then, we were playing basement parties, birthday parties for girls we knew in the eighth grade. And then we graduated to fraternity parties, at a very tender age, which my mother was not happy about. And so she enlisted my father to come on as our manager — not before we were exposed to some of the rites of passage that we were probably too young to witness. … We thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Because the girls were all really cute, and the frat guys were out of their minds and they would pass the hat. … But then we had a curfew because we were all like 12 and 13 years old. And in the course of all this, we learned all the filthy lyrics to “Louie Louie” and songs like that were college staples.

On writing the Doobie Brothers’ song, “Takin’ It To The Streets,” which was inspired by gospel

The intro of the song just kind of popped in my head, and I couldn’t wait to get to the gig and set my piano up and pick the chords out on the piano. … It just felt like an opening to a gospel song and I loved gospel music at the time. … What better motif for that very idea of people falling through the cracks of our society and … and how do we do better by each other than a gospel song. … It took me a minute to come up with “Takin’ to the Streets” because that came from the idea that … we’ve got to do better by each other or this is what it’s going to come to. It’s going to be settled one way or the other. These kinds of progressive ideas and reforms don’t come easily, and they come by necessity. … We’re going to meet on the same plane one way or the other, maybe we can do it out of love for each other and consideration and empathy before we have to do it out of frustration.

On the realization that white artists were covering Black musicians’ songs and being praised for it

I think that was pretty much the experience of a lot of people in my generation growing up. White kids who thought that Pat Boone wrote, “Tutti Frutti.” We didn’t know any better, you know, because radio was so segregated, as was everything, in the United States at the time. It was a sad division in what really was such a strong part of our culture, you know, but it was always kind of isolated away from and giving credit to the people who really brought those art forms to America and, really gave America its own true artistic art form: Jazz and R&B music and gospel. …

For instance, the English invasion bands, we thought that they wrote those songs like, “It’s All Over Now” by The Rolling Stones was Bobby Womack and his brothers and had a group called The Valentinos, and that song was a No. 1 hit on Black radio when the Stones released it. … I never cease to be surprised by the roots of some music that I thought was more of a pop record, but that really has its roots in the blues tradition and was written by American artists who didn’t really enjoy the success of the song that other artists did.

On being big in the Black community

Whenever that was brought to my attention, by friends of mine who liked our music, I was really flattered by that. And I continue to be flattered because, to me, that’s really the test of anything I ever really desired to do was to represent, in my own way, what I truly believe is American music. To have that privilege of being able to do that and have it accepted by the audience who I believe created it, who invented it and brought it to all of us.

On how his voice has aged

The voice is a malleable instrument, at best, and especially with age, it’s like you’re constantly renegotiating with it. I find that at my age now, I’m just trying to figure out what my strengths are and what I can use to put the song across. I wish in some ways I could sing with the range or the sense of pitch or whatever it is I had when I was younger. But unfortunately, those things change over the years. …

I’ve been less reluctant to lower keys and stuff, and especially if it brings a better performance out of me, but I found that a lot of things have changed. … I have to kind of learn what still works for me when I’m singing, because I don’t want to be trying to sound like I used to sound and have that be obvious. I want to just be able to do what I do best now.

Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.