Photo: Screenshot
He’s written tunes for The Muppets and Dora the Explorer, now Wellington musician Bret McKenzie has penned US music star Lizzo’s debut song on The Simpsons.
Lizzo, a multi-Grammy award-winning hip-hop and R&B artist, plays a cartoon version of herself and children's doll Goobie Woo in the finale of season 34 of the long-running US animated series.
In the episode – the show’s 750th – Lizzo also plays her flute, Sasha, and jams along with Lisa on her ‘samaxaphone’. In the song McKenzie wrote for her, ‘That Was Marge, Bitch’, Lizzo takes hapless Homer to task for, well, being himself.
Photo: Screenshot
While McKenzie is best known in Aotearoa for being one half of Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand’s "fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a cappella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo" with Jermaine Clement, he’s also a sought-after songwriter for film and TV shows.
Bret McKenzie Photo: Supplied / Sara Tansy
He told Jesse Mulligan that the request to write the song came to him via email in 2022.
“I got an email from Tim Long, an old-school Simpsons writer, who’s a friend of mine. When Jermaine and I were on The Simpsons, he wrote that episode… he emailed saying, ‘do you want to write another song, Bret, for Lizzo?
“Of course I was like, ‘yes, I do!’”
Once the song was written, he sent it away to the writers for their approval.
“They do a read-through, where they test the script with the cast and everyone. There was a version of me being Lizzo to begin with, then we had a Zoom recording session with her."
McKenzie said he was “a little bit starstruck” by the experience.
“Lizzo, I'm a huge fan of. It was just great. She's so funny, and an awesome singer, and she came on the Zoom and started singing ‘Bret, you’ve got it going on’ to me, which is an old Conchords song, so we had a great time.”
“She’s buzzy, she’s a really cool person.”
Photo: Lizzo/Instagram
In October last year, Lizzo dressed as Marge for Halloween. She told USA Today recently that the show appearance was a bucket-list achievement.
"I don't know a world without The Simpsons,” she said. “The Simpsons are in my DNA."
The episode will play on Disney+ in New Zealand in a couple of weeks.
Lizzo - otherwise known as Melissa Viviane Jefferson - will play Auckland's Spark Arena on 26 July.
