Learn About the History of the 1969 Muppets Song “Mah NA Mah NA”
The revival that The Muppets have enjoyed over the past decade has been wonderful and a lot of people want to hear the original hit song “Mah Na Mah Na” over and over again.
The song, it turns out, wasn’t written for The Muppets, and Bip and the Snowths weren’t the first to perform it, either (or the second, as it turns out).
It was originally written by Piero Umiliani, for an Italian mondo film called Sweden, Heaven, and Hell, which released in 1968.
A year later, “Mah Na Mah Na” made its American Television Debut on the 14th episode of Sesame Street. It featured a beatnik named Bip Bippadotta, who can say only a single word, and two girls who wanted to sing a song so badly they filled in the rest of the song around it.
Writers updated the skit when The Muppet Show debuted, give Bip – renamed Mahna Mahna – a blonde wig and pairing him with the pink Snowths that we’ve all come to know and love for his backup singers.
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