Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop Five: Music Videos Starring Puppets

This fall, the Muppets return to television for the first time since Muppets Tonight, and if the trailer released this week is any indication, the gamble may actually pay off. While Kermit, Piggy, et. al. prepare for their big return, we can tide ourselves over with five music videos starring the Muppets (or puppets like them). Or, as Kermit might say, "It's a top five list! Yaaaaaaay!"

1) The Housemartins, "Five Get Over Excited" (1987)

For all of their artful applications, puppets are really just toys. In the video for the Housemartins' 1987 classic "Five Get Over Excited," they're treated as such. The whole video looks like the end result of giving 12-year-olds a modest budget, a song, and a camera. That's not meant as an insult. In under three minutes, the lads ride go-karts, sneak beers, and screw around with puppets designed to look just like them. The likenesses aren't as on point as other entries in the band-as-puppets genre (with Genesis's "Land of Confusion" taking this to its logical, disturbing conclusion), but the glee with which Paul Heaton and the boys operate their felt doppelgangers more than makes up for any quality issues.

2) LCD Soundsystem, "New York, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down" (2008)

Not to take anything away from his moments of arm-flailing ebullience, but Kermit the Frog does his best work when he's bummed the fuck out. In his unofficial video for LCD Soundsystem's "New York, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down" filmmaker Simon Owens situates the frog's anxieties in the Big Apple, leaving Kermit as a solitary Muppet in a sea of humans. He may be green, but as he sighs out James Murphy's end-of-the-night worries, we can see a lot of ourselves in that frog. In addition to being great on its own, Owens' video also has the distinction of being one of the best Muppet mash-ups, a surprisingly fertile subgenre that's spawned plenty of listicles of its own. 

3) Saves The Day, "Freakish" (2002)

When you're an underemployed monster in West Hollywood, how do you spend your evenings? For the b-list puppets of "Freakish," the answer is "get smashed at The Lounge and maybe sing along with some emo band." Although they don't command the name recognition as their Muppet counterparts, the monsters' generic appearance works to their advantage here; do you really think Chris Conley's lyrical ode to ennui and romantic frustration would resonate as well if Fozzie Bear were the one heaving the sigh?

4) Weezer, "Keep Fishin'" (2002)

Before they folded in upon themselves in a miasma of Top 100 auto-pilot and Peter Pan syndrome, Weezer was just another band torn between critics and true believers. For the most famous video from 2002's Maladroit, they recruited another group hungry for reinvention: the Muppets. At this point, Jim Henson's gang was in the wilderness, still smarting from the box-office failure of Muppets From Space. "Keep Fishin'" succeeded for band and Muppet alike. Weezer got a viral hit, which transcended the limits of pre-YouTube video sharing and planted the seed for later collaborations like the meme-tastic "Pork and Beans" or the cover of 2014's Everything Will Be Alright in the End. For the Muppets, the video recovered some of their lost cool, reminding a younger generation that, despite a decade of kiddie flicks, Kermit and the gang still had the chops to hang at the adult table.

5) Superchunk, "Package Thief" (1993)

We've spent most of this list talking about hand-operated puppets, but this last entry is dedicated to one of the puppet world's forgotten classics: the marionette. In particular, the marionettes that cavort around as Superchunk in the band's video for 1993's "Package Thief." Jittery and string-bound, the puppets give off the kind of unstable, mischief-making vibe that the band cultivated at the time. They also reveal a surprising bit of lineage: frontman Mac McCaughan is likely a distant cousin of Randy from Pee-Wee's Playhouse.