The Lonely Island share story behind SNL digital short so bad they couldn't believe it aired

Ask anyone who watches Saturday Night Live: Sometimes a joke hits and sometimes it falls so flat that it causes the people who made it to look back and shudder.

The members of the Lonely Island — the trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, who created digital shorts for the Lorne Michaels sketch show — squirmed when they rewatched "Daiquiri Girl" on a recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast. Samberg, Schaffer, and Seth Meyers, who was a cast member and head writer at the time, marveled at the awfulness of the 90-second clip, which they said they thought would never make it into the final show.

"We definitely thought it was not gonna air," Samberg said.

But it did. On the April 12, 2008, episode hosted by Ashton Kutcher, several years after the group's "Lazy Sunday" became a hit, "Daiquiri Girl" played for all the world to see. Viewers met Samberg as Clementine, who's playing keyboard and crooning his heart out in his apartment to ridiculous lyrics that seem to be about a girl who's — an actual drink?

"When I first met you, you were not a daiquiri. Then you went and had a scientific discovery. One part rum, two parts ice. Three parts love. You are so nice," he sang.

The entire clip, which you can watch above, is also made to look like it was shot with someone's hand-held video camera sometime in the ’90s. And that's not even the most notable thing about the short; that would be a long message that runs across the screen that features an apology. The guys explained that they had planned another piece with "a famous musical act," but "they bailed at the last minute."

Meyers said that "Daiquiri Girl" could "be slang for a thing that happens at SNL."

"You guys were now a thing that [creator Lorne Michaels] was excited to have in the show. He depended on you, and everybody when they started the show wants to be that. But then every now and then, you have that situation where, like, we need one. And this is what it looks like when you got nothing," Meyers said. "So 'Daiquiri Girl' could just, like, be a stand-in for any like.... I feel as though it never took off as slang, but I feel like you could be like, 'Oh, let's just say it was a real 'Daiquiri Girl' of a week."

The Lonely Island members said Gnarls Barkley, the night's musical guest who they'd planned the alternate sketch for, pulled out at "Friday night at 9 p.m." just as the comedians were on their way to the very low-budget filming location.

"It would have been our friend Brian [Burton], who's Danger Mouse, and then CeeLo [Green]," Schaffer said. "And they were roommates with Andy, et cetera, et cetera. But even that one, I will admit, I was so-so on. But it was one of those ones where it's like, all right. We gotta write something. We wrote it."

He said it would have been "a solid B."

But "Daiquiri Girl" received a lower grade from the creators, who said they really just threw the song together.

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"The whole thing is — and I don't say this in a way where I expect you to be impressed — a oner," Samberg said to laughs. "Like, there is automatic little automated beat in there, you know, little samba or whatever. Yeah. And then I just sang exactly what you're seeing."

He admitted it was "freestyle" and "terrible."

Meyers admitted that, in his memory, it had never made it to screens. When the late-night host listened back to the lyrics, he said, he was "really laughing at how deeply s---ty they were."

The Lonely Island returned to SNL for its 50th season, most recently with "Here I Go," which costarred Charli XCX.

Watch the full "Daiquiri Girl" episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast above.