“Rainbow Connection” by Kermit the Frog

"Rainbow Connection" opens The Muppet Movie, the 1979 film starring Kermit the Frog, with Jim Henson performing him perched by himself on a swamp log, strumming his own banjo. Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher wrote it, and it does real work in the story: it sets up the frog's dream of making millions of people happy, the dream that sends him off toward Hollywood.

That a song sung by a frog turned into a genuine hit says plenty about its pull. It climbed to No. 25 on Billboard's Hot 100 that November and hung around the Top 40 for seven weeks, and Williams and Ascher were nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song. In 2020 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.