Watch Kacey Musgraves & Lil Nas X Sing Sesame Street Classics On Elmo’s New Talk Show

Watch Kacey Musgraves & Lil Nas X Sing Sesame Street Classics On Elmo’s New Talk Show

HBO has just fired up its long-promised HBO Max streaming service. The service has a few new exclusive originals, including The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo, a Sesame Street spinoff in which the beloved-among-children squeaky-voiced red monster toddler gets his own talk show. The whole thing seems to be a sort of parody of the classic late-night shows. Cookie Monster is the Ed McMahon. Elmo’s show-opening monologues include knock-knock jokes. And there are musical guests.

Whoever books the musical guests on Elmo’s show seems to have a weakness for pop-country rule-breakers. Thus far, the show has featured Kacey Musgraves and Lil Nas X, both of whom have sung songs from the Sesame Street archives. Musgraves, for instance, has taken on the Ernie classic “Rubber Duckie,” a song that actually reached #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 way back in 1970. (Musgraves’ highest-charting single, 2013’s “Follow Your Arrow,” peaked at #60. Ernie just totally annihilates Kacey Musgraves on the pop charts.) Musgraves’ version of the song is a sweet, simple solo-acoustic one, sung while bubbles blow around her. If Musgraves has a rubber duckie of her own, she does not bring it with her onstage. She’s dressed in bright yellow, though, so maybe she’s the rubber duckie?

Lil Nas X, meanwhile, offers his take on “Elmo’s Song,” a ditty that dates back to 1989. (Elmo is older than he looks.) Lil Nas X and Elmo sing it together, and Lil Nas X apparently has some sort of built-in Auto-Tune; he doesn’t even need a microphone to conjure it. Watch both performances below.

The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo is currently streaming on HBO Max. Future episodes will reportedly include guests like John Mulaney and Batman.

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