By now, if you aren’t one of "Adventure Time"’s devoted fans, you’ve at least seen a few kids, college students, or adult children wearing gear emblazoned with the show’s characters (Finn, the last human left in a post-apocalyptic cartoon world, and Jake, his magical dog best friend/brother). Maybe one of those adults has tried to pitch it to you as "not just for kids", or you’ve encountered an adult critic at a prestigious publication fawning over it. Maybe you just heard someone use the word "mathematical" as an exclamation. Or you encountered one of the hundreds of remixes of "Bacon Pancakes".

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There’s a reason kids’ TV tends to produce a lot of infectious little songs like this—before they become effectively literate, music is an easy way for children to digest and process information. It’s why you still probably use "50 Nifty United States" to remember the names of all of the states, and why "Schoolhouse Rock" continues to be awesome/one of your primary sources of civics knowledge well into adulthood. It’s unsurprising, then, that "Adventure Time", one of the best and most complex pieces of television of the past few years, period, has created an excellent space for music.

In that light, "Adventure Time"’s "Stakes" miniseries, which debuts on Cartoon Network tonight, should be an event. Not only is it the show’s first foray into extended storytelling—with a single plot unfolding over the course of four days and eight episodes—it includes all sorts of cool action sequences and, best of all, it focuses on the backstory of the show’s most musical character: Marceline (Olivia Olson), the magical land of Ooo’s bass-playing, red-eating eternally teenaged Vampire Queen. But "Stakes", as fun as it is, ultimately fails to fully deliver, mostly because of a lack of, um, stakes. Instead, its most exciting moment is a snippet of a single song.

"Everything Stays" is pretty much a perfect "Adventure Time" song. It’s quiet, beautiful, and heartfelt—a lullaby for children at heart, no matter their age. It’s comforting in its simplicity, undeniably modern yet still timeless. The lyrics are comforting in their universality ("Everything stays, right where you left it/ Everything stays, but it still changes") while somehow remaining pointed and memorable enough to evade banality. If you approach it with an open heart, you won’t be able to help it evoking something painful and important—it should (and, for me, does) hurt to listen to. And by now, that’s about what you’d expect from songwriter Rebecca Sugar.

Sugar, one of "Adventure Time"’s early storyboard artists and writers, was also one of its most important songwriters, penning, among other songs, the now-ubiquitous "Bacon Pancakes". The hallmarks of a Rebecca Sugar joint are, in some respects, pretty superficially obvious. There’s a simple, stripped-down melody that doesn’t call attention to how stripped down it is so much as it doesn’t take more than it needs. There’s a lot of healthily-expressed pain and often uncomfortable earnestness. Like those bacon pancakes, they contain a pure, concentrated sweetness that should probably cause a toothache—but it doesn’t, because, like the pancakes of Ooo, Sugar’s songs are magic.