Okkervil River – “What Friends Do”
Okkervil River have shared “What Friends Do,” the theme song to Amazon Prime’s animated holiday special Click Clack Moo: Christmas At The Farm. Based on the book series from Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin, the special is written by Will McRobb, directed by Jennifer Oxley, and features the voices of Crazy Ex Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom, SNL’s Pete Davidson, and Patton Oswalt. Okkervil’s Will Sheff explains:
When I was preparing to write the theme for Click Clack Moo I listened intently and repeatedly to my favorite kids’ songs by writers like Joe Raposo and Harry Nilsson. There’s something about writing songs tailor-made for kids, I noticed, that brings out something really tender and urgent in adults. You start thinking a lot about what the one simple and sincere message you’d like to pass on to a kid might be. In the case of Click Clack Moo, I had to work with already existing material, so my job was more to mine what was already there than it was to make up something extraneous. The original Click Clack Moo book, by Doreen Cronin, is about a bunch of farm animals who learn that by banding together they can get the farmer to provide them with better living conditions. So I thought I’d write a song that reflected that message — that if you stand together with your friends and if you stand up for your friends you’ll never feel alone and you’ll be able to get great things on behalf of everybody, stuff that would never be possible to do all yourself.
Listen below.