You can blame Bret McKenzie for the songs you and your kiddos keep singing from the Muppets Most Wanted movie. My daughter has only seen the film once and yet she seems to know a lot of the words, it’s that catchy!
While in LA I also had the chance to interview Bret McKenzie (I know, it was an amazing trip!). Having won an Oscar for the hit song “Man or Muppet” from the first Muppets movie I wouldn’t have expected him to be as down to earth as he is. I am so glad that he was able to work on this Muppets movie as well because you can tell he loves what he does (not only in the music he creates but in the way he spoke during the interview). Here’s what he had to say about the Muppets Most Wanted soundtrack…
Considering your song “Man or Muppet” won an Oscar, was there any pressure working on the music for this film to try to meet that kind of standard again?
Yeah…obviously there was a lot of pressure because of the Oscar but really what could I do? There’s always gonna be a downhill…so I had to get on with the job and just forget about that. ‘Cause I didn’t work on the last Muppet film to win awards, you know.
Why did you start with the song “We’re Doing Sequel”?
The first song “We’re doing a sequel,” they had the original idea then I just started looking through the history of bad sequels and qualities of sequels and there’s so many. The first lyric in the song, [SINGS] “We’re doing a sequel, that’s what we do in Hollywood, but everybody knows that the sequel’s never quite as good,” that is, it felt like a great start to the movie ’cause it lets the audience know that first of all it’s a sequel and then we know that it’s possibly not as good as the last one. [LAUGHS]
…that’s what I love about the Muppets is they can do that, you can, the Muppets can turn to the audience and look straight at camera and talk to them about how they’re making a movie
What’s your creative process for putting the songs together?
Well they send me a script with the idea of a song but it’s usually quite a loose idea…then I would write the song and then adapt it for the characters and I’d go to James Bobin and play it to him
…one of the stranger experiences on the job is I go to the Disney offices to play the songs to them.
And I sit at the piano and having done two Muppet films now I can do a fairly, not good, okay impression of a lot of the different characters so I would say, “This is Miss Piggy’s ballad,” and I’d sit down in this room with all these suits, these Hollywood suits, and I would go, so Miss Piggy, she turns to the camera and she starts doing like this, [IMPERSONATES MISS PIGGY IN HIGH-PITCHED SINGING VOICE] “How can something so right, be so…” literally a crazy job but kinda fun. Yeah so, I can do all those Muppet voices.
Do you get any inspiration from Flight of the Conchords for your songs on the Muppets?
I mean, in some ways it’s the same sort of thing, writing comedy songs. I guess that’s where I learned how to write comedy songs. So I’m using the same techniques, yeah.
When you have writer’s block what do you refer to for inspiration?
YouTube. It’s kinda fun writing songs in the studio because we can look through it, there’s such a great history of recorded music now, you can look at’70s and ’80s songs…I’m a real sucker for power ballads…for this film I would look back at a few oldies, they’re not on YouTube but like Irving Berlin songbooks, old kinda Broadway, show tunes.
What was it like creating a song for Tina Fey?
I always wanted to do this doo wop song in there and then I started working with Tina Fey, who got
the role of prison guard, and I adjusted the song to suit her voice because it was the wrong pitch and we kinda worked together to find out what her strengths are, where her voice sits. That’s one of the benefits of being the songwriter and producer of the songs as well…if it’s not working I can just change the song.
If you could be a Muppet, which Muppet would you be?
I would probably be one of the two old guys, ’cause they get a lot of the best jokes. It’s between them and Animal for me.
Do you have a favorite song from this film that you wrote?
I like “I’ll Get You What You Want (Cockatoo in Malibu)”…which is the bad frog trying to woo Miss Piggy.
…it kinda comes out of left field and it’s a genre that I really love, that kind of early ’80s Lionel Richie, Michael McDonald, Doobie Brothers sound…It was kind of fun to make a Russian frog sing as Michael McDonald might sing.
Do you have a favorite Muppets Most Wanted song yet? Mine is “I can Give You What You Want”…the fact that Bret McKenzie sang it for us may have a little something to do with it.
Disclosure: I went on this trip as part of a Disney press trip. All of my travel, lodging and meal expenses were covered by them. No other compensation was received. However, all opinions/thoughts are 100% my own
Those were some good questions. I always thought it would be hard to ask questions,like what to ask. Good stuff thumbs up!
This guy Bret Mckenzie sounds so talented and it is really hard to write music for movies, but he sure knows how to do it. He helped create a song for Tina Fey that would be good for her voice. I bet the music is amazing in this movie. I love watching the Muppets.