How Do ‘The Simpsons’ Writers Know When to Make a Musical Episode? Here Are 5 Ways to Tell

It’s Musicals Week at IndieWire. With “Wicked” about to sparkle over theaters, we’re celebrating the best of the movie-musical genre.

Setting aside shows like “Glee” and “Schmigadoon,” which put song and dance at the center of every episode, few TV series have brought to life as many musical moments as “The Simpsons.” Over 35 seasons (and counting), Fox‘s timeless sitcom has produced 29 musical episodes (per WikiSimpsons) and quite a few more if the parameters are expanded to include any episode featuring meaningful original music. No matter how you define a musical episode, a number of “The Simpsons” best-ever entries feature catchy melodies paired with smart (and smart-mouthed) lyrics, from “Marge vs. The Monorail” to “That ’90s Show,” “A Streetcar Named Marge” to “Cape Feare.”

Still, despite devoting more episodes to musicals than most modern series get for an entire series, “The Simpsons” is approaching 800 total episodes. Relatively speaking, they don’t get to make that many musical episodes, so the question becomes: How do the writers decide when to make one? What makes a story idea apt to be told with music? When do they need to decide, and where do they find the time to write lyrics, compose music, and learn the songs in addition to the labor-intensive work that goes into making a traditional, music-less animated episode of television? (And lest we forget: “The Simpsons” is still churning out 18-22 episodes per season.)

For answers, IndieWire turned to long-time “Simpsons” scribe and producer, Tim Long. Currently credited as a co-executive producer, Long has written scripts for musical episodes, as well as lyrics for their songs. He’s worked in close collaboration with guest musicians as well as “The Simpsons'” staff composer, Kara Talve — so he knows a thing or two about what it takes to make a musical episode really sing.

“There’s just certain circumstances where it’s funny on our show for things to turn into a musical,” Long said. “There’s just points where if you have a good song and it feels like it’s earned in some weird way — that there’s a good point in the story for it and you’re not just throwing a song in for no reason — it can really elevate a show. It can really make people sit up and take notice.”

“You don’t want a song to happen just for its own sake — although certainly we’ve done that, too,” Long said with a chuckle.

During our interview, Long explained in detail what those “certain circumstances” would entail, citing various episodes he’s proud of and how they came to be. Below, we’ve sorted them into five catch-all categories — or, if you prefer, five good reasons — why a regular “Simpsons” episode should become a musical episode. It’s obviously not an exact science, but even a team as endlessly creative as the “Simpsons” writers’ room needs some guidelines.

1. To Take a Dry but Important Topic and Make It Fun (and Important)

One of the first episodes Long cited was the Season 33 finale, “Poorhouse Rock,” in which Bart goes to work with Homer and decides he wants to be a nuclear safety inspector when he grows up, just like his dad. But when a magical singing janitor (voiced by Hugh Jackman) overhears Bart’s plan, he explains why such a job isn’t likely to be available by then: The middle-class is dying, and their cushy jobs are dying off, too.

Long said the idea for the episode was inspired by an article in The Atlantic titled, “The Life in ‘The Simpsons’ Is No Longer Attainable,” which examined why the “dreamily secure existence” of America’s favorite sitcom family was no longer a practical goal.

“It was about how the American dream of having one parent working and one parent at home raising the kids — and owning a house and having a car and having a TV and all that stuff — is basically dead,” Long said. “You need two incomes or you have to downgrade from that [dream]. And I thought that was really interesting. Obviously there’s all sorts of dry ways that you could explain that, but we thought, ‘Well, what if we put this into a song?'”

From there, the idea just kept growing. What started as a short song in the middle of a dialogue-driven episode became an 11-minute musical sequence that took over the episode’s entire back-half.

“And then you just start thinking about absurd ideas, like, ‘Well, what if we got Hugh Jackman to sing it? And what if Robert Reich made an appearance and did some singing as well?’ And it just kept going on and on and on and on.”

Here, the musical elements aren’t just entertaining. They’re educational. The explanation of what happened to America’s middle-class is even more memorable because of the clever lyrics and enticing melody.

“I always think it’s funny when somebody explains something that may otherwise be sort of dry in a song,” Long said. “You kind of have to have an idea of what the song is trying to say. As much wackiness as there is on our show, every scene has to develop the story somehow, and it’s the same thing with the songs. Is this a song where, over the course of it, the person singing is going to realize something? Or what’s the shape of it? This sounds so dry, but what’s the thesis of it or the topic statement?”

‘The Simpsons’Courtesy of Fox

2. When Music Is the Story’s Focus

Sometimes, though, the music itself can be the topic at hand.

“Another way [to make a musical episode] is if the show is about music or about people’s reaction to music or what it means to them,” Long said. “Then, I think, it’s obviously a no-brainer to put music in.”

Long wrote the 2021 episode, “Panic on the Streets of Springfield,” which started when he was thinking about his evolving appreciation of Morrissey’s music. Long “loved” The Smiths’ frontman in the ’80s, but “he’s kind of become a little crazy lately and been saying some offensive things, in my opinion.” Then in the “Simpsons” writers room, people were talking about how their kids had started discovering musicians who peaked well before their time — one 2020s era teenager loved ’70s era Billy Joel, for instance.

“So that was sort of the genesis of a show I did a few years ago where a very Morrissey-type guy became friends with Lisa,” Long said. “Then, of course, you have to create songs that are sort of evocative of The Smiths — they have to be kind of at that level because, whatever else you want to say about the band, they were incredibly good musically.”

At this point in making a musical episode, the writers have two options: They can handle it all in-house, writing lyrics themselves while working with the staff composer, Kara Talve.

“She is just jaw-droppingly talented,” Long said of the three-time Emmy nominee (and current Grammy nominee). “She has incredible range and a really good sense of genre. So lately I’ve just been going to her.”

Or they can look for outside help, as Long did for this episode.

“I’m not a musician,” Long said. “I play a little guitar, but I am not a songwriter, at least not melodically. But I like writing lyrics. I can usually write lyrics for a song that’s sort of based on an actual song or an amalgam of two different songs.”

“Luckily, I’m friends with Bret McKenzie, one of the guys from the Flight of the Concords. So I said, ‘How do you feel about this challenge?’ And he said, ‘I’m into it.’ So I wrote a bunch of songs.”

“I’ve done a few things with Bret and the formula is always, I’m the Bernie Taupin and he’s the Elton John. I write lyrics, and then I send them to him and I’m like, ‘I hear this as this kind of song.’ Then, shockingly quickly, he bounces it back to me and it sounds amazing. He’s both followed my directive and done something I never could have even articulated.”

From there, Long sent the music to Benedict Cumberbatch, their first choice to play Lisa’s Morrissey-like crush/imaginary friend, Quilloughby, and he quickly signed on. The musical origins demanded a musical episode, and Long was particularly proud of the result.

“That was sort of a magic show for me,” Long said, “even though Morrissey himself got very angry about it — maybe partly because Morrisey got very angry about it. But it turned out great.”

3. To Help Turn Thoughts Into Action

If you can’t tell from the eccentric plots of each aforementioned episode, “The Simpsons” never shies away from unconventional ideas, and that very much includes utilizing music to turn abstract thought into a lucid narrative.

“Another reason it’s great to have a musical episode is if things are happening entirely in somebody’s mind,” Long said.

“Homer’s Adventures Through the Windshield Glass,” the Season 34 finale which premiered in May 2023, is exactly what it sounds like. Homer gets in a car accident, and as he’s flying through the windshield, hurdling toward his imminent demise, time slows down. Homer starts thinking about his life, sharing his thoughts with a doll that was in the passenger seat next to him. Long, who wrote the episode, credits the guest star voicing the doll with providing the impetus for a musical component.

“Because it’s Lizzo, when it came to a point in the show where Homer had to have this huge epiphany, it turned into a song,” Long said. “That felt like a really good place to have a song, and it was a very Lizzo-type song, and again, Bret wrote the music.”

Even though audiences might not expect a song to emerge when it does, the surrealism of the episode’s premise combined with the raised emotional stakes of Homer’s looming death makes it perfectly reasonable for him to burst into song.

“There’s an old saying — I don’t know who said it, but if Bob Fosse didn’t, he should have. The only reason someone should sing in a musical is if they’re too emotional to talk, sing. And if they’re too emotional to sing, dance.”

Homer didn’t need to dance, per se, but he couldn’t have had a better reason to sing.

“Audiences are very sophisticated, so if they feel like you just dropped in a song for the sake of doing a song, it’s dead from the word go,” Long said. “Even if you can’t articulate it, there has to be a reason for it. You have to feel like, ‘Oh, this is taking it to a new level. This isn’t just wasting time.’ We can sense that, and I think the audience can, too.”

Time matters to the production team, too. On a network schedule, adding an original song (or two, or three) takes a considerable lift. Having Talve in-house helps, as do trusted collaborators like McKenzie, and having songs ready early in the process helps secure key guest stars (like Jackman and Cumberbatch) while raising spirits among the staff.

“You do have to kind of get on top of that and have them write it, but they can write it really fast,” Long said. “Lately, we have played the song at the table read. Because the point of the table read is so people can get a sense of what the show’s like, and we can course-correct if there’s things that aren’t quite working. Often we would just have a recording of it, but the last table read I did that had a song, I just brought Kara in — she brought her keyboard, she performed it live, and she just blew the roof off the place. I don’t think we’d ever done that before. It’s a big lift if you’re in a room and somebody starts performing. It just makes everybody really happy.”

‘The Simpsons’Courtesy of Fox

4. To Evoke a Specific Emotion

Nostalgia has been force-fed to American audiences for far too long, far too often, but when used wisely, memories of the past can be a powerful boost to art made for the present. Songs, in particular, can elicit memories with potency and speed, which the “Simpsons” team utilized in this year’s episode, “Cremains of the Day.”

“We had a great episode,” Long said. “where Larry, one of the butterflies at Moe’s Tavern who never speaks, suddenly dies. The guys go to his funeral and no one else is there, and they realize that he led a very lonely life and that they were his only friends. So the guys start to feel incredibly guilty, and then we just launch into a parody of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ by The Beatles, which is also about a lonely person who dies without anyone in their life. Not only is the episode a parody of that, but it also uses different animation that’s very similar to a segment in ‘The Yellow Submarine,’ the animated movie by The Beatles, which had a similar sequence.”

“If a song touches on a certain emotion, you can sort of allude to it,” Long said, “and even in that case, you could even use the animation, too. I think you would’ve enjoyed that song [in the episode] even if you didn’t know the movie. But also if you did know the movie, you’d be like, ‘Wow, that is what the kids call a deep-cut. That is a obscure reference that they’re doing, and that’s great.'”

“The Simpsons,” first and foremost, is a satire. It lives and breathes pop culture, incorporating some of the world’s favorite movies, books, TV shows, art, and more into moments big and small. Using music — and animation — to hearken back to one of the world’s most popular bands while simultaneously making a thematic point about a character specific to Springfield, well. that’s what it’s all about.

5. To Take Advantage of the Medium

Animation is a medium, not a genre, which means it should be given the same respect as its live-action peers, but it also means it can support an infinite number of stories.

“The nature of animated shows is that they have a more elastic reality,” Long said. “So if someone bursts into song, you’re not like, ‘Why are these guys on ‘The Wire’ singing a song?’ That may not work for them, but on our show, it’s fine.”

Long understands there’s a certain segment of the population who carries an aversion to musicals, whether it’s justified or not. He’s aware of the controversy surrounding marketing campaigns for “Mean Girls” (2024) and “Wicked,” which seem to hide the fact that the movies they’re selling are filled, start to finish, with original songs. But that’s never been a problem for “The Simpsons.” The network never pushes back, to Long’s knowledge, when a musical episode is proposed, and he hasn’t seen any significant backlash from fans, either.

“I think ‘The Simpsons’ established — and shows like ‘Family Guy’ and ‘South Park’ sort of cemented — this idea that animated shows can do a song in the middle of a non-musical episode,” he said. “If you see a song on ‘The Simpsons,’ you don’t necessarily think — even if it has trappings of a Broadway musical — that it’s not necessarily going to keep going for the rest of the episode. Even if they do, for some reason, it doesn’t feel as threatening [in animated shows]. The songs are naughty and they’re funny. The contract with the audience is just different.”

Knowing this helps keep the door open for more musical moments. Writers are always thinking of new ways to experiment within the world of “The Simpsons,” and they should. Animation allows for anything to happen. That alone can be a great reason to suddenly burst into song.

“The Simpsons” airs new episodes Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Past seasons are available to stream on Disney+.