Sesame Street Cred / Sesame Street

Elmo be ballin' up in here!

Over the course of its fifty-plus-year history, Sesame Street has played host to an astonishing number of special guests. So much so that it's only natural that they all got their own page to themselves. Performers would sing a "kid friendly" version of one of their songs or count, or spell, or talk about a concept like "In and Out" or "Up and Down". Occasionally crossed over with Parental Bonus when an actor associated with adults-only TV shows or films made an appearance, with a further bonus if their appearance spoofed the adults-only show they were known for. Among the most notable...

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• R.E.M. performed "Shiny Happy People" (their Black Sheep Hit, which they hate and refuse to play live) as "Furry Happy Monsters", complete with a Muppet Kate Pierson.
• Feist. In an interview conducted after she won a Juno Award for the song she parodied on the show ("1234"), she said she'd done that song many times but not with monsters staring at her or chickens in bikinis.^note the segment had just recently been filmed.
• Ray Charles made multiple appearances, the most notable being a performance of the Alphabet Song with a number of other famous people singing various letters.
  • Among others, this included Shari Lewis and her character Lamb Chop.
• The B-52s.
• James Taylor sang "Whenever I See Your Grouchy Face" to Oscar the Grouch.
• Carol Channing sang about the letter "S" with Sammy the Snake.
• John Munch. Yes, you read right...a fictional character has Sesame Street Cred. (Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, and Ice-T were also featured from the set of SVU.)
  • Which wouldn't be the first time. In 1976, Margaret Hamilton appeared on the show as The Wicked Witch of the West.
• The 'kid-friendly' bit was totally subverted by Stevie Wonder, who performed "Superstition" not only straight (save for a Name Drop in the second verse), but as a balls-to-the-wall seven-minute jam session.
• Paul Simon tactfully left the last stanza — the one about how 'the radical priest come to get me released' — off "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" when performing it on the Street. This still left the bits about Mama spitting on the ground and Papa threatening 'the house of detention' intact, however.
• Stephen Colbert starred in a Sesame Street straight-to-video special in 2005. Unfortunately, Sesame Street Cred is not legal tender at The Daily Show.
  • Jon Stewart already beat Stephen to this cred; he hosted and sang at Elmopalooza in 1998.
• Robin Williams.
• Jim Carrey.
• Ice Cube teaches Elmo the meaning of "astounding". In the GQ webseries Actually Me, he mentioned to a Reddit user who asked about it that he was proud to be on a show he grew up with.
• Ricky Gervais. He's said it was the coolest moment of his career.
  • The actual segment is also hilarious.
• Herbie Hancock during the 80s. He played an electro-jazz version of the theme song and showed what electronic sound equipment can do.
• Patrick Stewart shows his Shakespearean roots in this clip from Sesame Street.
  • And appears again here.
• Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor also made numerous appearances (Pryor while obviously coked out of his ever-loving mind), but in Cosby's case he was practically a recurring guest host.
• Indie rock band Tilly and the Wall.
• Neil Patrick Harris as the Sesame Street Shoe Fairy.
  • A gif file of him dancing with Elmo◊ has become an internet meme.
• Along the same lines: Harvey Fierstein singing Everything's Coming Up Noses.
• Jack Black shows children what an octagon is.
• The Goo Goo Dolls turning a hit song about teen pregnancy into an encouragement to feel proud of yourself. Worth watching for the bassist's reactions to Elmo.
• Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel do their critic exercises and argue about thumbs.
• Perhaps the earliest Sesame example, Buffy Sainte-Marie was a regular on the show's first decade. This was after her ability to get gigs and radio play in the US was compromised due to her protest music.
• Johnny Cash sang "Nasty Dan" to Oscar the Grouch. And it was awesome. He also sang "Five Feet High and Rising", and "Don't Take Your Ones to Town" (obviously a child-friendly version of "Don't Take Your Guns to Town").
  Oscar: *as Cash leaves* That was my kind of guy!
• Harry Belafonte had a segment with The Count, singing about, of course, a coconut-counting man.
• Cab Calloway likewise appeared way back in the 70's, singing "Hi De Ho Man".
• Smokey Robinson sang "You Really Got a Hold on Me" to an anthropomorphic letter U.
• Billy Joel and Marlee Matlin sang "Just The Way You Are" to Oscar the Grouch.
• Destiny's Child performed a remake of "A New Way to Walk" in 2001.
• Even minimalist composer Philip Glass has Sesame Street Cred, as he composed a piece of music for Sesame Street back in 1979. Behold, the geometry of circles.
• Conan O'Brien did a short segment from the comfort of his Late Night studio.
• Tito Puente appeared alongside Elmo and Grover getting all of them to dance along.
• Michelle Obama has appeared on this show, too, though her appearance makes more sense. Big Bird joked about her height, asking her if she was also a bird because she, like himself, was "really tall."
• John Leguizamo made an appearance in 2002 in a remake of "Captain Vegetable", where he taught Elmo the importance of eating vegetables.
• Katy Perry was set to appear singing a cleaned-up version of her song "Hot 'N' Cold" with Elmo, but it eventually wasn't shown because some parents complained about her cleavage. The performance was released online though.
• Sofía Vergara appeared on the show not long after Katy Perry. You could tell the controversy was still fresh on people's minds because the busty Vergara made sure to wear the most modest church blouse she could find.
• Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, in "Cookie Monster Thinks the Moon is a Cookie".
• R2-D2 (a mechanical prop) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels)
• Idina Menzel and her husband Taye Diggs appeared to teach children about allergies.
• Idina's Wicked castmate Kristin Chenoweth appeared on some Elmo's World segments as Mr. Noodle's sister, Ms. Noodle.
• Jamie Lee Curtis' appearance in 1989 is a highlight among many, many episodes and segments on the subject of tag.
• Violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman (who gave us the violin solo from John Williams' theme to Schindler's List) appears in this segment.
• Good Eats host Alton Brown appears to show the meaning of the word recipe. His segment even does several Shout Outs to his own show, most notably Alton being handed things from off-camera by "Thing" (taken over here by various muppets).
• There's also the variation where the performer doesn't appear, but you know you've made it when Sesame Street parodies you:
  • Sesame Street agrees with Huey Lewis and the News: It's Hip To Be A Square!
  • Look at Grover. Look at me. Back to Grover. Back to me. Grover may not be me, but he could smell like me.
  • Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark somehow managed to get negative Sesame Street Cred when it was parodied as SpiderMonster: The Musical.
  • Upside Downton Abbey.
  • Game of Chairs with a surprising amount of adult humor; "Don't lose your head over it, Neddy!"
  • True Mud and Preschool Musical (the latter of which contains a subtle Take That! towards Disney's heavy marketing of the franchise).
  • Sons of Poetry
  • Mad Men (the title being the same is intentional)
  • The Halloween Episode Sharing Things. Oddly enough, this skit premiered in November.
• The 2010 Shalom Sesame miniseries features stars such as Anneliese van der Pol, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Christina Applegate.
• The German version of the series, Sesamstraße, had Lena Meyer-Landrut, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2010. Here she sings the song Bert, oh Bert!, a parody of her winning song Satellite.
• James Blunt singing "A Triangle" to the tune of "You're Beautiful".
• In the main page quote, Frances McDormand refers to a video in which Big Bird gets lost at the department store, but finds Maria again with help from an employee portrayed by McDormand.
• Parodied on Avenue Q, where Gary Coleman is one of the characters (the superintendent), but is usually played by a different actor/actress.
• Jim Parsons learns about the word arachnid.
• Tom Hiddleston teaches Cookie Monster how important self-regulation is.
• The Spin Doctors performed a kid-centric version of their hit "Two Princes" once.
• Will Arnett plays a magician in one episode, and is introduced with Suspiciously Similar Song version of "The Final Countdown". Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds.
• Here's a Tear Jerker: Christopher Reeve talking about his wheelchair.
• And after that, here's Henry Cavill talking about respect.
• Victor Borge appeared on both Sesame Street and The Electric Company (1971), where he illustrated punctuation marks with his "Phonetic Punctuation" routine.
• Mark Ruffalo teaches the importance of empathy.
• Andrea Bocelli sang Elmo a lullaby and it's as beautiful as it sounds.
• Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared on Sesame Street in 2012, explaining the concept of a career to Abby Cadabby.
  • Interesting note: Sotomayor was born to a working-class family in the Bronx—in an area quite similar to Sesame Street itself. She would have been the show's original prime target demographic had she been born about 10 years later.
• Gloria Estefan, performing "Conga" and "Mambo I, I, I", and "1-2-3".
• Dave Matthews and lovable furry old Grover go way back.
• As of January 2014, Pentatonix got their Sesame Street Cred! Appropriately enough, they are singing and counting to five.
• Benedict Cumberbatch matches wits with "Murray-arty", with help from The Count.
• John Oliver both inverted the trope, and then played it straight.
  • He featured Sesame Street characters on his own show...
  • ...and then he appeared to explain the difference between English and American dialect for the same things.
• Famous tap-dancer Savion Glover was a regular for several years in the '90s, as was Laugh-In alum Ruth Buzzi.
  • Before she became a regular cast member, Buzzi appeared in a 1977 film insert, "Where Do Potatoes Come From?"
• Wayne Brady gives an impromptu lesson about the word "between". As Wayne is apprehensive, Elmo asks "Aren't you supposed to be good at making things up in a moment?"
• In the recent decade, more came to the show, most notably Kat Dennings, Lupita Nyong'o (For both of them, they were with Elmo) and even One Direction!
  • Here's One Direction singing about U.
• Elvis Costello and Elmo (both dressed in jacket, tie, fedora, and hipster "NHS glasses") sang about the time "the monster went and ate my red 2".
• The German Retraux Jazz singer Max Raabe once appeared on Sesamstraße to sing a classy lullaby for the characters.
• Ian McKellen teaches Cookie Monster to resist.
• Sarah Jessica Parker appears in a sketch, waiting on park bench for Big. There probably weren't too many kids in the audience who got that one. Other actors from adults-only TV shows that appeared on the Street (while said shows were still running) have included Emmy Rossum of Shameless (US) and Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones.
• Jimmy Kimmel had an appearance in a segment made for his show where he taught Elmo, Grover and Cookie Monster about the letter "yook".
• Richard Kind of Spin City fame appeared in a 2005 episode as the Fairy Balloon Person, where he gave Snuffy balloons so he could learn how to fly.
• A few members of Hamilton have also made appearances.
  • Lin-Manuel Miranda appeared all the way back in 2009. It's a rare example where the guest spot happened before the celebrity in question became popular, as Miranda worked for Sesame Workshop at the time of his cameo, being on the staff team for both Sesame Street and the reboot of The Electric Company.
  • Chris Jackson also appeared to sing "The Story of Tonight" with Elmo. (Lin has a cameo at the end as well.) Chris later returned to sing a song about kindness.
  • Daveed Diggs sang a remixed variation of Ernie's "Rubber Duckie" song.
• Even animated characters have had their share of Sesame Street Cred.
  • A surprising example would be, of all people, The Simpsons, as they appear towards the end of the celebrity edition of "Monster in the Mirror".
    Bart: (to Grover) Hey Wubba, man!
  • Pixar's mascot Luxo Jr. and his father Luxo Sr. also appeared in a series of skits on the show in the early 90s.
  • The pro-recycling PSA "Yakety-Yak (Take it Back)", which included appearances of MC Skat Kat and Bugs Bunny, was occasionally featured on the show in the 90s as well.
  • Batman and Superman have Sesame Street Cred as far back as the very first test pilot for the series. Superman appearing in a skit where he stops a giant ape, and Batman settling an argument between Ernie and Bert from their TV set.
  • The Pink Panther appeared in a segment practicing karate as an example of a word starting with the letter K.
• PBS's own news anchor Robert MacNeil of The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour made several appearances, including interviewing Cookie Monster about "Cookiegate", a parody of the Watergate scandal, in the 1988 pledge drive special, and after his retirement from the News Hour, covering the WASA moon landing in "Slimey to the Moon".
• En Vogue performed the original song "Adventure" on the show at the height of their fame in the early 1990s.
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus guest starred in the 25th anniversary special as a news reporter. This guest spot is well-known for a blooper that happened as it was being taped.
• Jeff Goldblum appeared twice as himself in 1990 for the all-star version of "Monster in the Mirror" and, with his then-wife Geena Davis, the all-star version of "Sing" for a tribute special in the wake of songwriter Joe Raposo's passing. In a twist however, these were offshoots of his biggest appearance on the show, which wasn't this trope — he played Bob's Adventurer Archaeologist brother Minneapolis in the Raiders of the Lost Parody "The Golden Cabbage of Snufertiti", a street story that was popular enough for the 2019 Milestone Celebration DVD compilation 50 Years and Counting to include it.
• Talk show host Phil Donahue appeared as himself in the 1985 season premiere that saw the rest of the Street's residents finally meet Mr. Snuffleupagus (after years of them believing he was merely Big Bird's Imaginary Friend).
• When president-elect Joe Biden named his long-time adviser Antony Blinken as his chosen Secretary of State in November 2020, the Internet was quick to find video evidence of Blinken’s appearance on the show, back when he was deputy Secretary of State under Barack Obama.
• Wired.com has a series where cast members answer several Google Autocomplete questions about their roles. The Sesame Street Muppets did one, and one of the questions was about this phenomenon; watch the Muppets' answer starting at the timestamp here.
• Lil Nas X sang with Elmo on an episode of The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo.
• Margaret Cho appeared in a segment with Prairie Dawn.
• Salsa legend Celia Cruz had multiple appearances on Sesame Street.
• James Earl Jones recited the alphabet.

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