The Lonely Island very much wanted everybody to look at them when they were on a boat. But at the Grammys? Forget it! When The Lonely Island earned a surprise Grammy nomination for 2009’s “I’m on a Boat”, they had one goal in mind: to lose.
On a recent episode of their namesake podcast with Seth Meyers, the Lonely Island trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone sat down to chat about “I’m on a Boat” competing for the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration Grammy, in which they were competing against the likes of Jay-Z, Beyoncé and T.I. As Schaffer put it, “I don’t know if anyone’s ever gone to the Grammys hoping to lose more. We were like, if we win, we can’t get on stage. We were only confident enough to go cause we were that sure that we were going to lose…We never for a second thought we’d win, which was, again, a relief and why we could take the whole day as kind of a fun joke that we were there as musicians.”
Samberg jokingly added, “We were a little salty about not being nominated for comedy album,” although it’s worth noting they would land a nod in that category for Turtleneck & Chain, losing that to Louis C.K.’s Hilarious. “I believe we had had the biggest selling comedy album of the year and, as everyone knows, if you sell a lot, that means it’s high quality.”
As for fellow Lonely Island founder Jorma Taccone’s thoughts on the matter – well, he’d rather not discuss it, as he’s still miffed that he couldn’t be in the music video due to being out of town for his anniversary.
The fellas, who broke out on SNL with 2006’s Dick in a Box, also recalled their collaborator T-Pain being in utter disbelief that he would get nominated for “I’m on a Boat” considering he had other collabs with Jamie Foxx, Busta Rhymes and more that year.
What is your favorite Lonely Island song? Are you on a boat or are you jizzing in your pants?
