Muppets Live Another Day was a planned series for Disney+. It was a direct sequel to The Muppets Take Manhattan, and involved the Muppets reuniting to find a missing Rowlf the Dog. In his post about its cancellation writer Josh Gad said “My only hope is that one day you can all hear the BRILLIANT music [Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez] wrote for Kermit and company.” This was my biggest “what could have been” about the project, because Robert is an EGOT winner and together they wrote the songs for Frozen and Coco.

Earlier this week, we got to hear one of those songs for the first time. The husband and wife songwriting team was on NPR’s Bullseye, and asked host Jesse Thorn if they could perform an unreleased song they wrote for Kermit. While we don’t know with 100% certainty this song was from Live Another Day, it’s the only project Kristen worked on involving Kermit¹ and the lyrics are a clear match to what Gad described as the project’s theme, “what happens after you’ve reached the end of the rainbow”. The song is lovely, and perfectly in character for Kermit. (Also, Robert’s Kermit voice is much better than Bret McKenzie’s.) The song made my day when I first heard it, and I give it my highest praise – I resisted the urge to post it immediately, and saved it for this header where marginally more people will hear it!

Have fun posting!

1. Robert worked on another cancelled Muppets project, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, two decades earlier with another songwriting partner. The Lopezes also wrote several songs together for Bear In The Big Blue House. ↩︎