“Elmo’s Song” and the Heartbreaking Lie of Creation
Elmo is a liar, and your life is meaningless. That’s the short version of this piece, if you want to skip to the end.
The longer version is that I was going to write something jokey about the hit children’s ditty “Elmo’s Song,” and how Elmo didn’t actually write the music or the words.
But then, I discovered who really wrote the song, what his life was like, and how much I missed him without even knowing it. After that, the world came crashing down around me.
But let’s take a little step back from my apocalyptic scenario for a moment to provide a little bit of context.
For people of a certain age — children, parents of children, or people who were formerly children — “Elmo’s Song” is a part of their DNA. You might know it better as “Elmo’s World,” the theme song to the appropriately named Sesame Street segment “Elmo’s World.”
You might also have heard it being sung by any number of animatronic Elmos or blasting out of a child’s stereo or haunting your dreams.
Regardless, it’s a catchy tune — but in case you’re not familiar, the set-up is that lovable red monster Elmo came up with a song. The relevant lyrics are these:
He wrote the music.
He wrote the words.
That’s Elmo’s song.
But of course Elmo didn’t create the song. Rather, Tony Geiss, long-time member of Sesame Street’s writing staff, wrote it.
You know Tony Geiss, right? He worked on Sesame Street for 28 years, so naturally you know his name just as you do Gordon’s or Mr. Hooper’s. Except, you don’t.
You know Jim Henson’s name (and rightfully so). You probably know Frank Oz, who performed Bert, Cookie Monster and Grover for years. You may even know Kevin Clash, the guy who voiced Elmo for a nearly three decades (though possibly for different, more disturbing reasons).
But chances are that unless you’re a die-hard Muppet fan, and possibly not even then, you don’t know Tony Geiss — who passed away at age 86 on January 21, 2011. I didn’t, and I live in a house packed to the gills with Muppet memorabilia.
Geiss is as crucial to the development and creation of Sesame Street as any of those names you might actually know. In addition to writing “Elmo’s Song,” Geiss composed dozens of other tracks for Sesame Street including the classic “Sing After Me.” The song was later remade by Elmo and Ernie, but the original (1978) featuring Madeline Kahn and Grover is the definition of everything I want in a relationship/comedy routine.
A song like “Sing After Me” also underlines the magic that originally made Sesame Street (and The Muppet Show) work: mixing an incredibly catchy song with a great lesson, a talented star at the peak of her abilities, and sly, laugh-out-loud funny humor that entertains kids and adults.
“Elmo’s Song” and “Sing After Me” are not all Geiss contributed to the Muppet oeuvre. He also created the Honkers, based on his own childhood habit of honking his own nose. And he also helped create the incredibly popular character Abby Cadabby, which is a plus or a minus depending on how obsessed a child you know is with “Abby’s Flying Fairy School.”
Oh, and Geiss co-wrote the animated films An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988) as well as the first Sesame Street feature film Follow That Bird (1985) with his frequent collaborator and fellow member of the Sesame Street team, Judy Freudberg.
Yet on Jim Henson’s Red Book, an otherwise excellent, in-depth history of the late genius, Geiss only gets one brief mention: when he was brought in punch up a 60 Minutes parody on The Muppet Show (1979) that ultimately never aired. His co-contributor, Freudberg, isn’t mentioned at all — which is heartbreaking.
If 22 daytime Emmys, multiple classic children’s characters, and having a hand in (sometimes literally) raising an entire generation of children doesn’t make you a household name, what does?
Here’s the thing: Geiss and Freudberg are far from alone. They may have worked diligently in the shadow of Jim Henson for decades, but dozens of people also worked for them to make their brilliant work possible.
Even with their credits rolled on hundreds of episodes of Sesame Street, we still we don’t know the behind-the-scenes folks’ names off-hand — like Jeff Moss, who wrote “Rubber Duckie” and “Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood” or Joe Raposo, who wrote “C Is For Cookie” and “Bein’ Green.”
And that’s just one program. Take the sum of every children’s show on television, everything that was a crucial part of your childhood, and other’s childhoods, and you have thousands of people who will never get the recognition of the one or two people who are the faces of the enterprise.
Jim Henson may have “created” my childhood, but it took hundreds of other people to create Jim Henson. Two of those people were Tony Geiss and Judy Freudberg.
Now you know their names.
The original Sesame Street sketch starts with Elmo’s presenting his song to Big Bird and Snuffleupagus. They get sad about how they don’t have their own songs, so Elmo points out it’s easy to insert their names into the song. They do, they sing their own verses, and the song ends with the following lyrics:
He wrote the music.
We wrote the words.
That’s Snuffy’s…
That’s Big Bird’s...
That’s Elmo’s song!
And then Elmo calls for more residents of Sesame Street to get in on the action.
Geiss didn’t write a song for Elmo, and Elmo isn’t a liar: I’m a liar. “Elmo’s Song” was a gift Geiss gave to the world, creating something that any child, any adult, any puppet could put its name into and make its own. And he gave it without (most of) us ever knowing who he was.
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