Most music publications have already—rightfully—gone gaga over Bob and Gene Belcher’s recent cover of “Transmission” and its accompanying music video posted to the official Bob’s Burgers “Side Orders” YouTube channel. The father-son pair funnels the Joy Division track through the chirpy ukulele sound familiar to the show’s opening credits music, and intersperses Gene’s calling-card sound effects: fart noises and dog barks. As for our lead vocalist, Bob, he starts stuffy but loosens up as the song jogs forward, eventually wailing his guts out into the mic and writhing around on the floor of Gene’s room.
It’s unironically pretty great—and this is far from the first time the long-running animated series (currently airing season 16) has intersected with unironically pretty great music. Bob’s Burgers has serious rock-and-roll cred: Creator Loren Bouchard grew up tinkering with four-track tapes, drum machines, and synthesizers in the garage with his sister (he’s surely the OG Gene Belcher). Every episode closes with a different, original song that corresponds with the plot. And the show itself is basically signed to Sub Pop, the legendary indie label having released both of their albums—the 112-song Bob’s Burgers Music Album in 2017, and Vol. 2 in 2021. Beloved handyman Teddy even did an unboxing video around the release of the former, showcasing its stickers, patches, lyric sheets, and various LPs.
Music is an integral part of the show, in other words, and over the years the team has managed to rope in alternative music A-listers to write or cover songs that are sometimes goofy throwaways, and sometimes strangely moving. In honor of Gene and Bob’s recent home run, here are a few other collabs and crossovers between the residents of Seymour’s Bay and some of our most cherished artists.
St. Vincent, “Bad Girls”
Back in season two, usually by-the-book Tina—the Belchers’ oldest child and preeminent author of erotic, graphic, freaky friend fiction—indulges a rebellious phase, cutting school to hang at the mall. It results in this Joan Jett-y cautionary tale, “Bad Girls,” which St. Vincent covered as the first entrant in the Bob’s Buskers series of cover versions by famous artists. Over garage-rocky guitar strums and a boisterous drum machine, she helps young Tina answer the age-old question: “Are the boys and their cute butts really worth all this?”
Stephin Merritt and Kenny Mellman, “Electric Love”
“Electric Love” is, of course, the climactic musical number of a school science project about Thomas Edison falling in love with Topsy, the Asian circus elephant electrocuted on Coney Island in 1903. “What’s going on?” asks Bob from the audience, reasonably enough, as the performance begins. “It’s science, Bob, you’re not supposed to understand it,” Linda chastises. For the Bob’s Buskers series, this opus was tackled by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields and Kenny Mellman of The Julie Ruin (he also played keys on Merritt’s second album as The 6ths). Truly a duet for—and of—the history books.
Sleater-Kinney, “A New Wave”
Tina’s imagination never fails her—or us. In this music video, after Tina slips a CD into the player in her room, Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss materialize alongside her many horse posters to blast through the wriggly, zippy, unfairly catchy “A New Wave” from the iconic Pacific Northwest punk trio Sleater-Kinney’s 2015 comeback album, No Cities to Love. I wonder whether she was the one to manifest their reunion.
Fred Armisen, “Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex”
Speaking of Brownstein, her Portlandia partner-in-crime Fred Armisen guests in the season three episode “Nude Beach.” Tommy Jaronda, a health inspector played by Armisen, seems cool at first—he’s a rockstar, really, and just health-inspects to pay the bills. After one of Tommy’s shows falls through, Bob lets him play in the restaurant. “What your burger did to my mouth, my music is gonna do to your ears,” he tells the Belchers. The catch is, his songs turn out to be far from PG. As Armisen reveals via trashy open chords, he’s good at having “uh uh uh uh sex sex sex sex,” a number that seemingly invokes his iconic punk frontman caricature.
Fiona Apple, “Pig Trouble”
In the season 10 Halloween episode “Pig Trouble in Little Tina,” Tina must contend with the specter of a fetal pig she was given to dissect in science class. As the always-musical end credits roll around, it’s the voice of thee Fiona Apple who doesn’t offer advice so much as needle the eldest Belcher sibling for bungling herself into this unusual predicament—“He’s got a tail that’s curly, and he’s coming for ya, girly.”
The National, “Saving the Bird” (and loads more)
The National have a long-standing tradition of covering a Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving tune that dates back to “Gravy Boat” in season 4. The most recent full-band collab was on “Saving the Bird,” a tie-in to season nine’s “I Bob Your Pardon,” in which the Belchers attempt to save a turkey from slaughter. Written by the show’s writers, “Saving the Bird” was performed by the band, who, in the video, cram into a family sedan with said anxious turkey (named Drew P. Neck) riding up front as Matt Berninger drives them past fall foliage to the safety of not-a-turkey-farm. Other National needle drops include “Give It to Teddy,” “Bad Stuff Happens in the Bathroom,” and “Christmas Magic,” while Berninger teamed up with Ronboy (Julia Laws) for “Burger of the Night” just last year.
The National & Phoebe Bridgers, “Laugh Track”
Oh yeah, The National love this show so much that they enlisted The Bob’s Burgers Movie director Bernard Derriman to make a music video for the title track off their 2023 album. It doesn’t feature the usual primary colors or any of the Belcher crew; instead, the unmistakable animation style is applied to a fairly harrowing analysis of a relationship falling apart as Berninger and Bridgers murmur to each other over the lingering kind of sorrowful, sighing dad-rock.
Phillip Glass, “Mishima (Bob’s Burgers Arrangement)”
Gene saves the holiday concert in this surprisingly moving Christmas episode from season 13. The musical director is absent and the kids don’t know how to play their xylophones without her, so Gene gets the bright idea to remove all the keys they don’t need—resulting in a note-perfect performance of this arresting, icy instrumental as all the episode’s separate threads come together beautifully. It’s actually a cover of venerated minimalist composer Phillip Glass’ “Mishima / Closing” piece, originally from the soundtrack of Paul Schrader’s 1985 surrealist biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters—but real ones know it as the music from Gene’s xylophone concert.
Jack Black, “Grease and Fear”
For its 300th episode milestone last year, Bob’s Burgers had to go big. The kind of big that only one man can provide—a man who’s done more to meld rock and roll with comedy than perhaps anyone else. With his iconic stripy beard and diamond-encrusted-burger cape, Jack Black is the personification of the Bob’s Busker character. Flanked by Tenacious D collaborators John Kimbrough, Scott Seiver, and John Spiker, Black delivers a starpower ballad centered on an all-important PSA—Bob stinks, like, in a smelly way—to close out this special origin-story episode.
Cyndi Lauper, “Taffy Butt”
Who better to dish out omniscient wisdom about there being treasure in an abandoned taffy factory than the Queen of Quirky Pop? This uked-up take on Lauper’s “The Goonies ’R’ Good Enough” plays over the end credits of the season two episode “The Belchies”—as in The Goonies—in which the Belcher children try and fail to track down prohibition-era gold. In other words, you should always listen to Cyndi.
