14 Talk

Wet Paint (Cerf/Stone)

Written by	Christopher Cerf & Jon Stone
Date	1984
Publisher	Splotched Animal Music (BMI) Polecat Music Music (ASCAP) Sesame Street, Inc. (ASCAP)

Earliest Known Appearance: Episode 2847

"Wet Paint" is a song from Sesame Street, performed by How Now Brown and the Moo Wave. The song tells about what wet paint is and how it is used. The music video features footage of paint continually splashing and dripping chroma-keyed in the background (which repeatedly changes from white to blue). By the end of the song, How Now Brown (wearing a chroma-keyed vest) becomes crazy over wet paint, and paint begins to coat the camera lens while the screen slowly melts away (including the MTV-style captions).

The music video also features two brief shots of How Now Brown dancing on a yellow tarp with paint smeared on the floor, showing that he dances in it while singing about it.

There were two versions of the video. One of them starts with the red "WET PAINT" logo, and ends with yellow and orange paint-splatters. The other variant is longer, featuring a brief MTV-parody intro by a Hot Pink Anything Muppet VJ (performed by Fran Brill) and an extended ending that closes on a varied mix of colors.

1 Notes
2 Releases
3 Gallery
4 See also

NotesEdit

The video bears some resemblance to the music video for "Freeze Frame" by the J. Geils Band, particularly because both music videos involve paint, use similar visual techniques, and end with paint covering up the lens.
The televised version of the video has MTV-style captions that refer to "Splotchkat Records"; on Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street, the video has faux album and label credits referring to Signs of the Times and Mootown Records.
Lyrics to this song were released on a songbook in the original VHS release of Count It Higher.