My Morning Jacket Achieves 'Muppet Glory' with 'Our World'

My Morning Jacket

C Flanigan/Getty Images

Earlier this year, My Morning Jacket told Rolling Stone that a few of the tracks on their latest album Circuital were originally written for Gorillaz-like project involving the Muppets, and that two other songs penned by frontman Jim James were rejected from the forthcoming Muppets movie starring Jason Segel. "Twice, Muppet glory has been within my grasp," James said. "It's pretty heartbreaking."

Photos: Levon Helm's Midnight Ramble with My Morning Jacket

Well, it looks like James and MMJ have finally attained their moment of Muppet glory. The band have recorded a cover of "Our World," a song from the 1977 Muppets Christmas special Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, for The Green Album, a disc of Muppet covers that will be released around the same time The Muppets hits theaters in November. You can listen to their recording of "Our World," which is absolutely lovely, in the YouTube clip below.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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