Popsmart - “The Backyardigans’” five best, most bizarre musical numbers

most bizarre musical numbers

In the story “Good Cute, Bad Cute” in the Flicks section this week, I talk a little bit about the Nickelodeon show “The Backyardigans” and my obsession with interest in it. On every episode, the five young protagonists (each a different pastel animal) go on imaginary adventures in their backyard. Each episode is also a musical with songs and dances in a specific genre (Evan Lurie, formerly of the Lounge Lizards, is the show’s musical director). The musical genres don’t always match up with the fanciful story lines, which is where the fun weirdness begins.

Here are five of “The Backyardigans” best and strangest musical numbers — that I could find on Youtube. There may be a few better ones, and stranger ones, but these really stick out. The headers identify the title of the tune and the musical genre. (Warning: they could get pulled by Nickelodeon’s parent company at any time, even though clips like this seem like the best possible advertising):

“We Are Bad Bots” (Jug band)

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“Cops and Robots” offers outer space adventures with two of the kids as intergalactic police officers and two as ill-intentioned automatons. Why does decidedly low-tech music provide the score to a relatively high-tech premise? Beats me, although there’s a “Dukes of Hazzard” quality to a chase scene that comes later in the episode. (BTW, note that, as robots, the characters’ skins have metallic sheens on this episode.)