The Composer Behind Hey Arnold Is Taking The Show's Music On Tour, And Fans Are Losing It

Jim Lang wrote the music for Hey Arnold!, the beloved Nickelodeon animated series that ran from 1996 to 2004, and in doing so accidentally introduced an entire generation of children to acid jazz, funk, and hip-hop without any of them realizing what was happening. The show's theme song alone was a gateway drug to genres that most of its young audience had never knowingly heard before, and its individual episode scores were often as strange and emotionally precise as the characters and storylines they accompanied. Lang is now taking that music on the road with his band the P.S. 118 All Stars, performing live versions of the Hey Arnold! score at venues across Southern California this fall and winter, including stops at Pappy and Harriet's in Pioneertown and The Observatory in Santa Ana. He told LAist that the intention was never to introduce children to new musical genres, that it was more a happy side effect of letting the image play through him and getting out of the way, a philosophy he credits as much to the writers, animators, and background artists as to himself. The music worked, he said, because everyone else had already done their jobs so well.

What has surprised Lang most about the live shows is the emotional weight in the room when the band starts playing. He describes them as a love fest, and the word choice is apt: millennials who grew up with the show are showing up not just as nostalgic audience members but as people who feel a genuine and specific connection to the sounds they are hearing, because those sounds are tied to five seasons of a show that felt like it understood something true about childhood. Lang said the music is meaningful to fans because the show was meaningful, and that hearing a live band play it gives audiences something familiar in a way that seems to thrill them. His note to anyone who spent formative hours watching Arnold navigate the urban landscapes of a neighborhood that never quite existed: the music always meant something, the musicians always meant it, and the P.S. 118 All Stars are playing it live in a room where you can hear it the way it was always meant to feel.

Source:https://laist.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/hey-arnold-nickelodeon-music-tour