Ranking every song in The Muppet Christmas Carol

The most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, muppetational Christmas musical ranking around

It doesn’t matter how early you put the tree up, it’s not Christmas until you’ve seen Michael Caine dancing around in his pyjamas with a singing cabbage. As everyone surely already knows, The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best and the truest version of Charles Dickens’ immortal classic – a fact testified to by Dickens himself, who narrates the whole film.

This year, Brian Henson’s musical muppet masterpiece is getting an extra helping of magic thanks to a tour of screenings with a live orchestral accompaniment. Written by Paul Williams (the same talent behind Bugsy Malone, A Star Is Born and the Carpenter’s ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’), the songs in The Muppet Christmas Carol are all much better than anything else you’ll hear over the next few weeks – and they’re all sung by muppets.

So put another shovelful of coal on the fire, wipe your screen with a live rat, and read on as we rank every song in The Muppet Christmas Carol from great to greatest.

‘Room In Your Heart’

Nope, you haven’t been falling asleep at the same point in the film every year, this one didn’t make the final cut back in 1992. Originally written for Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker – to be sang in the counting house when they turn up asking for a charity donation – the song is now only ever heard on the film’s soundtrack. While it’s always hilarious to hear Beaker sing, it’s easy to see why the song was cut. It’s a fun little merry-go-round tune, but it really doesn’t need to be there.

‘Chairman Of The Board’

Here’s another off-cut. Sam Eagle gets some of the film’s best scenes as Scrooge’s old headmaster preaching “the American way!”, but he originally had his own song too. Speak-singing like Rex Harrison, Eagle (played by Yoda himself, Frank Oz) turned a business seminar into a rousing marching band starter. Almost certainly played at the JP Morgan Chase Christmas party.

‘Bless Us All’

Aww. The cutest character in the story gets an extra layer of fuzz here (literally), as Robin the mossy frog plays him like a charity ad. He’s far too sickly to carry the whole song, but what starts out as a kick to the heartstrings softens into sweetness as the rest of the Cratchits join in. There is no greater love than that between a frog, a pig, and their weird frog/pig family.

‘Thankful Heart’

The bit when Ebenezer suddenly has to act nice to everyone is always a tricky scene to pull off in any Christmas Carol adaptation, but Michael Caine does a lovely job here thanks to Williams’ heart-swelling ‘Thankful Heart’. So much of the emotional lifting is done by the lyrics here that Caine doesn’t even look silly when he starts dancing with the fruit section. It’s not the sweetest or the teariest song in the film, but it’s up there.

‘When Love Is Gone’

Another deep cut here, but this one still stings. If you saw the film in the cinema back in 1992, you would have heard this song (sung by Meredith Braun’s Belle, as she breaks up with young Ebenezer in the “Christmas Past” section), but most home video releases since have skipped right past it. Whole angry muppet fan sites have dedicated years to begging Disney to restore it, and now, thankfully, they have. You can now watch the full cut of the film on Disney+ and see why it made no sense at all to cut it out in the first place. Sure, it’s sad, but so is heartbreak kids.

‘Christmas Scat’

Impossible to hear without picturing the scene where you see Kermit’s weird legs walking on a treadmill made out of Victorian houses, the Cratchits’ little father son scat is 23 seconds of vintage Henson loveliness. Proving once and for all that all you really need for a great Christmas song is a couple of frogs.

‘One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas’

Forget ‘Driving Home For Christmas’, this is the only song that can overtake Chis Rea in the slow lane without trying. A gentle Kermit classic in the same vein of ‘The Rainbow Connection’ (also written by Williams), ‘One More Sleep ‘Till Christmas’ is the best December 24 track around – soundtracking the part of the film when Henson’s handmade Victorian London gets its finest moment in the moonlight.

‘When Love Is Found/ It Feels Like Christmas’

Remember that sad song that got cut out of all the home entertainment releases? Part of the reason why the muppet fanbase were so angry about ‘When Love Is Gone’ being edited away is because it ruins the tweaked reprise, ‘When Love Is Found’, in the film’s finale. There are probably other reasons too…

‘Marley And Marley’

How do you make a horror story about social injustice suitable for kids? The muppets found a way, of course, and the secret seems to be in not shying away from the darker elements of the book. If you grew up watching the Marley brothers singing about evicting children from an orphanage (accompanied by a chorus of chains and money boxes), there’s a very good chance you never went into banking.

‘Scrooge’

What an intro. Sang in by the entire Victorian underworld, including the cabbages, Ebenezer stalks into the film to some of its best lines (“Oh, there goes Mr Humbug, there goes Mr Grim / If they gave a prize for bein’ mean, the winner would be him”). The best, though, is when Williams manages to rhyme “houses” with “mouses”.

‘It Feels Like Christmas’

The film’s biggest hit is the one that feels the most enduring – not least because an encore plays out the end credits while everyone starts picking up their sweet wrappers. Sang by the late great Jerry Nelson (aka Tiny Tim, Ma Fozziwig, Jacob Marley and the Count on Sesame Street), the song is the film’s warm and fuzzy heart. Merry Christmas, one and all.

Find tickets for The Muppet Christmas Carol In Concert here.