Bret McKenzie

0:07Well Brett, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. No worries. So you're in with the Muppets now? Yeah. I guess James Boben brought you in. James, who directed Concorde and created it with us, he did the Muppets and he asked me to do songs for it. And how did the songs come about? Did you see the script and did it say okay there's a song here and we need this kind of feeling? Yeah, exactly. I mean within the film there's a story of there's a guy that's a Muppet, I don't know if you've seen it. There's a guy's a Muppet and the guy's a man. Obviously, it'd be weird if you played them up. And they both have this sort of crisis, this identity crisis of whether they're a man or a muppet. And this is sort of in the middle of the film, it's kind of a turning point in the film. And the song deals with that sort of personal crisis that I think most people have had

0:54at one point in their lives. Debating if they're a Muppet or not. Trying to decide whether they're a Muppet or a man. Particularly men. And what about musically how did you decide this is the way you feel? It had to be an epic power ballad. It certainly is. And in my mind. So I just wanted, I love that genre and I haven't had many chances to write that style. And I love Harry Nelson's Without You and Eric Carmen all by myself. I went on holiday with the friends. That's a song. I went on holiday with the friends once and there were three of us. So it was me and my girlfriend and we had a third wheel. And she was solo, you know, single at a time she was really, they just cracked me up because she'd always constantly singing. Oh, by myself.

1:40I don't want to be. Yeah. Anyway, I love that style. I love that style of music. And I just wanted to make the song as dramatic. The more dramatic the funnier it would be. You know what I mean? But I wanted it to be sort of sincerely dramatic, you know? Muppet. Muppet. Muppet. Muppet. Muppet. That's interesting too. You've had, I guess, puppets in the recording studio. Did the puppeteers or the Muppeteers, I should say, bring them up it's in? Or were they doing the voice without them? Was that what you were doing? They didn't bring the actual puppets. Okay. But it's a very strange experience because you've got these characters that I grew up with so I know the voices. So you've got a dude in there who sounds like a Miss Piggy.

2:26And in between takes sometimes he keeps the Miss Piggy thing going. So you're like, might be talking to Miss Piggy. You know what I mean? Method actor, yeah. They kind of method Muppeteers. And they have all these rules. Like, I didn't know, I mean I grew up with the Muppets but I didn't realise that chickens can't talk. You know, where pigs and frogs can talk. Everyone else can talk with chickens and penguins can't really talk. So you're in the studio and the finale in the movie has about 50 different Muppets. So it's spent a week recording these guys coming in, you know, there's like six penguins on screen. And so there's one dude going, this is pink. And it's a penguin three. Crack my crack. Crack my crack. Yeah, it's really a very funny job. What about working with Jason? Is he a singer?

3:11Like, how was it? He's a great singer. You know, that's one of the worries in this sort of job is that you don't know if these actors can actually sing. But they all want, they will think they can sing. They'll just come in and they're quite nervous. And I think they, they sort of approach singing as though it's a part, like they pretend to to be a singer, do you know what I mean? And they were all a bit nervous. Jason came in once and often they have a little drink or something to come in nerves. And Jason came in after a 10 day cleanse. And he did that, one of those cleansers where you drink lemon juice and stuff.

3:59But then he was nervous so he had a drink of vodka and was honestly hilariously drunk. One of the minutes, he offered a little drink because he had a stomach and anything. You know, that's when he did one of his manum up at takes. Nice. It's amazing. So we do something called five questions. Five quick questions, one more to answers. Spielberg or Scorsese? Scorsese. Leonard and McCartney. Ooh, that's tough. Coxy, you gotta love wings. They are good. Although the 10 years afterwards, not so much. Yeah, that's terrible. Ooh, Leonard and McCartney. That's gotta be Leonard. Favorite puppet? Favorite puppet, animal. I think it's every guy's favorite puppet. Song you've written your most proud of. Oh, manum up, I'm pretty proud of that.

4:46Cool. And in one word, Brett McKenzie. One word. Ooh, what word? I don't know. That's hard. That's right. Mm, works too. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Sweet.