[laughter] “I didn’t realize how excited I was until I was there. Like, I’m literally looking over at the Muppets, and I’m, like, [gasps].” “You could be the most famous person in the world, the oldest or the youngest and the least famous, everyone has the same reaction to these characters still, 50 years later. Unbelievable. It’s the best job ever, period. But then, it’s not particularly fun to write about the letter A for the hundredth time, you know?” We asked a group of people who work at “Sesame Street”: How do you write and rewrite the ABCs for 50 years? Since its first season in 1969, “Sesame Street” has become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, and that has a lot to do with its musical legacy. “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me.” “Say! Who are the people in your neighborhood?” “It’s not that easy being green.” “Rubber ducky, you’re the one.” [singing] Music has been a part of “Sesame Street” from day one, and that’s by design. Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney noticed that when children watched TV, they gravitated towards commercial jingles. “New country cornflakes, new country cornflakes.” “And we’re using these same techniques to motivate children to absorb the curriculum content of our series.” “Oh, that’s kind of a groovy idea, Rowlf: commercials for the alphabet. They must have some people who know what they’re doing at the Children’s Television Workshop.” “‘Sesame Street’ is what we call a curriculum-driven show.” That means that being entertaining is fine, but everything that happens on “Sesame Street” is supposed to help prepare kids for school. And that means that the alphabet has to be on a lot. “Can you sing the alphabet?” “You want to sing it with me?” “Alphabet.” “Sing!” “Alphabet.” “A, B, C, D.” “E, F, G.” “H, I, J, K, L.” “M, N, O, P.” That’s great news if you’re a child or a Muppet — “We love the alphabet at ‘Sesame Street.’” — but maybe not if you’re a writer. “There was a long stretch on the show when we actually sang the alphabet song in almost every show, and we would come up with different ways to make it seem natural.” “Table 26 wants a hot alphabet soup!” “A, B, C, D.” “You know, while we’re waiting, let’s sing the alphabet song because we wanted the kids to hear it as much as possible.” “But for children to really know their letters, we need to focus on the individual letters. So that’s why we created the Letter of the Day.” “The Letter of the Day is: I!” “I’ve never gotten tired of writing for a letter —” “Because there are an infinite number of ways to do it.” “‘C Drives Me Crazy’ was a fun song.” “C drives me crazy, C, C.” “And ‘Rebel L,’ that was one of my favorites, partly because they let me play the letter L.” “I was born to go la, la, la, at the top of my lu, lu, lungs!” “When Smokey Robinson came on the show, I took his ‘You Really Got a Hold On Me’ song and wrote a song where the letter U was actually chasing him and grabbing him. Some kids were kind of scared by it.” [laughs] “Tell me, Queen Latifah, what should I do?” Using celebrities is one way that writers have kept the show interesting. “Oh.” “Oh.” [elephant roar] “Hi, Miss Moss.” “Oh, no, that’s Ross.” “Red two.” “You can count on him to count for you.” “This vegetable is green.” “Broccoli!” “Give it to me in the form of a question.” “Do I look depressed?” “That’s a D word.” “This is fun.” [singing] “And you’re dancing around.” “Sesame, Sesame Street!” [singing] “Stop the music!” “The adults are drawn to see those artists. The kids don’t know the artists.” “If the adults like it too, they might talk to their kids about the very song that you wrote. So if there’s a lesson in the lyrics, the kids will hear the lesson again.” Sometimes a guest can have so much star power that they can make the ABCs seem transcendent. “B, C.” But you can’t rely on fame alone to make the ABCs interesting. “I’m going through the alphabet now, why don’t you try it with me?” “A, B, C.” So how do you write a new version of the ABCs that’s really, really good and really, really popular? “We sang the alphabet with Usher in Usher’s very own unique, cool way. This is when they’ll roll to a clip.” “A — move your arms. B — bounce like a ball.” “The challenge with ‘Sesame Street’ is to write two hooks in a row.” “D — everybody duck down! E — elbows out.” “So you write the verse that’s a hook that you can remember, and then you write the chorus that’s a hook that you can remember.” “Move your body to the letters, that’s what you do.” “And if you’re really good, you can take them and squash them into one song, and there you have it. I remember calling up Chris, and I was like, ‘Want to write a song for Usher?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ And I was like, ‘Great!’” “Bill Sherman is one of my dearest and best friends. Lin-Manuel Miranda, Chris Jackson and I have been best friends since, well, a long time. We were inseparable best friends. We lived together for many years after college.” “Lin and Bill were eating — they were living on pizza bagels. Like literally every day, they would eat pizza bagels for dinner. And I’m like, ‘Y’all are — O.K.” “And when I got the job at ‘Sesame Street,’ it was very important to me to sort of diversify everything and bring in new people, and so what better people than my best friends? There was a thing called ‘Murray Has a Little Lamb.’” “Yo, Murray has a little lamb who wears a little bow.” “Go Murray!” “Lin-Manuel Miranda, the famed ‘Hamilton’ playwright, is also the voice of Murray’s theme song. Isn’t that ridiculous?” “Murray has a little lamb.” “That’s a tangential story, but a good one. Anyway, so he wrote this song, and we were psyched about it.” “We put a track together and I’d done a rough demo of it.” “Move your body to the letters, that’s what you do.” “When I first heard the demo, I knew it needed, it needed some personality.” “He’s, like, “No, no, I don’t want to do that. I want to do this.’” “I took every production element out and said, ‘You know what, we’re going to do this thing a capella, and I’m going to beatbox, and I’m going to harmonize and we’re going to change some of the lyrics. I hope that’s O.K.” “It was a broken-down version of this super-produced thing that we wanted to do, and what I loved about it was he had a very distinct picture of what he wanted to do. What my greatest test is that I play my songs for my kids. My older daughter, Maya, she’s the best. She’ll go ‘Eh,’ and if she goes ‘Eh,’ that means it’s terrible.” “O.K., that’s enough.” “I get emails and stuff from parents about their kids singing ‘The ABCs of Moving You,’ running around the house. Like, success! Success, that’s so great.” “Yeah, this is what happens when I watch this. It’s just happiness.” “The ABCs of moving you!” “Beautiful. I’m now, I’m marked in history forever, man. Can you ask for a better opportunity? Come on, man.” “It’s terrifying and exciting and overwhelming to work on a show such as ‘Sesame Street’ because it does affect so many people. Whether you’re 8 or 80, you probably have some sort of relationship with ‘Sesame Street.’ Well, except for — “Emily, our D.P., has never seen ‘Sesame Street.’” “Oh, really? Is that possible?” “That’s impossible.” “I’m upset.” “Really? You might be the first person that I’ve ever come into contact with that —” “Is she from another country or another planet? I don’t know.” “You watched Nickelodeon.” “Yeah.” “What advice would you give to somebody who is maybe a little bit tired of saying the alphabet?” “Tired of the alphabet song? Can you imagine, Abby?” “I mean, there’s so — there’s like 26 letters.” “It’s so exciting!”