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Earlier this month, you might have heard the latest song by ex-Beatle and former NORAD Santa tracker Ringo Starr. It’s a new track he recorded for (of all things) The Powerpuff Girls, a beloved Cartoon Network series about three adorable little girls with superpowers and their professor father. The show ended its original run nine years ago, but an all-new special episode, titled The Powerpuff Girls: Dance Pantsed, is set to air on Monday night. Starr guest-stars as a mathematician named Fibonacci Sequins (click here to check out his cartoon look), and recorded “Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl” for an animated music video (which you can watch below).
The A.V. Club called the video “trippy.” BuzzFeed dubbed the tune “the most adorable song.” And Rolling Stone reported that the “video, if nothing else, proves that the experimental Sixties spirit still shines bright.”
This isn’t the first time The Powerpuff Girls has been associated with The Beatles. The episode “Meet the Beat Alls,” which follows a villainous supergroup’s reign of terror, is packed full of Beatles references. But how exactly did the former Beatles drummer end up playing a part in The Powerpuff Girls? Well, according to Dave Smith (who directed the new episode and served as a storyboard artist during the show’s initial run), it took some convincing—and it almost didn’t happen.
“Brian Miller, who runs Cartoon Network in Los Angeles, came up to us one day and said that he’s one degree separated from Ringo Starr, and asked us if we wanted to reach out to him for a role,” Smith says. “We thought Ringo Starr would be fantastic as the mathematician. So we came up with a character design and sent Ringo a brief synopsis of the show and the characters he could play. And he politely declined.”
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This Is How Ringo Starr Got Involved With the New "Powerpuff Girls" Special
