Interview With Muppets Most Wanted Songwriter Bret McKenzie

Disclosure – I was invited to the #MuppetsMostWantedEvent. Costs and expenses for my trip were covered by Disney but all opinions expressed are my own.

If you have seen Muppets Most Wanted or The Muppets you will know that these movies include some amazing music. Music that makes you want to sing along or at least sing along in your head even when the song has stopped. I have the soundtrack for Muppets Most Wanted and L-O-V-E it!

During my trip to Los Angeles for the Muppets Most Wanted Press Junket we were able to interview Bret McKenzie, the amazing songwriter for the film.

If you haven’t had a chance to see the film yet, it opens with a song called “We’re Doing a Sequel” that was written by Bret McKenzie.  Take a peek at the catchy clip:

For those that didn’t know, songwriter Bret McKenzie won an OSCAR in 2012 for Best Achievement In Music Written For Motion Picture for his original song “Man Or Muppet” in The Muppets (2011). This man has some talent when it comes to making these catchy songs and in interviews I have listened to this week, McKenzie has mentioned that there was some sequel pressure when asked to write songs for Muppets Most Wanted.

He obviously works well under pressure because I am in love with the music from the film and so are many others. There are 25 songs on the Muppets Most Wanted Soundtrack to get you going through the day!

During our interview with songwriter Brett McKenzie, here are some of the questions we were able to ask him:

While working on the music for this film did you have any pressure to try to meet that kind of standard again?

Bret McKenzie:    Yeah I was, obviously yeah there was a lot of pressure because of the Oscar and, um, but really what could I do? It was, there’s always gonna be downhill, so, uh, I just had to, you know, I mean I was appreciative but then I had to get on with the job and just, you know, forget about that. ‘Cause I didn’t, I didn’t work on the last muppet film to win awards, you know. Yeah. That’s all we got? Okay, let’s go. You have a t-shirt as well, oh my god. This is like the Muppet Club.

So how fun was doing work similar so…?

Bret McKenzie: Oh it was really fun working on those, James and Nick Stoller sent me the script and they’re lots of fun, great ideas for songs and then I got to add new ideas and, um, the first song “We’re doing a sequel,” um, 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. And there was one lyric, the–– the first song, the first lyric in the song, um, “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, felt like a great start to the movie ’cause it lets the audience know that it’s a, first of all it’s a sequel and then we–– we know that it’s possibly not as good as the last one.

And it’s, you know, like that’s the way they wanted it ’cause he wants kinda the audience can’t but help go, “Oh is this gonna be better than the last one? Let’s see what they do.” So we kinda let them in on that. And then, um, and 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, and, um, yeah there was one lyric in that I just went through and looked at bad sequels and the qualities in them. Like there was one lyric that Ralph the Dog was gonna sing that, uh, was in the soundtrack but not in the movie where he goes, um, “We’re doing a sequel, how hard can it be? We can’t do any worse than the Godfather III.” So yeah it was a bit of a zinger so we took that one out. But then I like how Piggy can talk about how “there’s no need to disguise,” um, “the studio considers us a viable franchise,” there’s some fun, it was really a fun song to write, yeah. It was good.

Just your creative process, how you put your songs together?

Bret McKenzie: Um, well they send me a script with the idea of a song and then, um, I, but it’s usually quite a loose idea. And then for example the ballad, um, it was originally called “Love Ain’t Easy,” and it was a Piggy ballad. And first of all I was nervous because Piggy is a great character, a great comedic character, but not a great singer, and, um, I was worried about her carrying, you know, an emotional ballad because there’s only so much of her voice that the audience, I think, wants to hear, you know.

Thirty seconds is great, you know, then a couple of minutes you’re really start being a bit painful. So I suggested we put, um, you know, try and get a singer to help her and we were really excited when Celine Dion agreed, um, and I’m actually hoping that there’s a, I’m hoping that these two divas, you know, um, I’m hoping to get like a Las Vegas Celine Dion/Piggy, uh, Diva Night, um, that’s–– that’s my dream. Yeah. Anyway so then I would write the song and then adapt it for the characters and, and I’d–– I’d go to the, to James Bobin and play it to him and I’d, one of the stranger experiences on the job is I go to the Disney offices to play the songs to them.

Do you have a favorite song from this film that you wrote?

Bret McKenzie: I really like the, um, I really, I mean, I like how all of, sometimes I write songs for these things and they, I don’t like the way they turn out in the final film because I don’t like the video or something changes in the edit and, um, but I–– I really think, uh, the music’s kinda, I think it’s, the film works really well, you know, I really like the–– the final film was made and I guess my favorite would be, I don’t know, I mean, the opening’s pretty fun. I think it really gets the movie off on a–– a great note.

But I do like “I’ll Get You What You Want” brackets Cockatoo and Malibu closed brackets, uh, which is–– is the frogs, the bad frog trying to woo Miss Piggy.

Here is one of my FAVORITE songs from the movie, sung by Bret McKenzie.

Muppets Most Wanted is playing in theaters NOW! Have you seen it yet?