Ben Folds Explains Challenges of Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical’s Songs | Interview
Ben Folds is no stranger to the world of Peanuts, after he did music for 2022’s It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown special. Now he’s back for a full-blown musical on Apple TV+ featuring Charlie Brown and all of his iconic friends. The talented pianist spoke to ComingSoon about the challenges of creating three of the songs in Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical and his own breakdown of Charlie Brown’s psychology. The 40-minute special begins streaming on August 15, 2025.
“Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical” is a musical special about the joy and magic of summer camp and the importance of preserving what you love. Charlie Brown loves camp and is determined to make his final year special, but Sally, a first-time camper, is nervous and skeptical of the new and unfamiliar place. While everyone settles into camp, Snoopy and Woodstock discover a treasure map that takes them on a wild adventure nearby,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: You also did music for It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown in 2022. So was there any difference in approaching this, A Summer Musical, which has music as its main focus, or was it kind of a natural extension of what you had previously done?
It was a little bit of an extension.
The team remained roughly a lot of the same team on both productions. I think what happened both times was it’s very easy to underestimate what it takes to make a musical [laughs]. You know, this one, because it’s propelled through music, took longer, cost more, and was just more of a challenge to do this whole thing propelled by music. I think it’s kind of like when you’re getting renovations done on your house and they say it’s gonna be two weeks and it’s gonna cost, you know, this much money to multiply everything by two, six, whatever. So, it was a little bit more, yeah.
But the same things existed which is that I was given a script. The script could change depending on the music. And then the script did change after the music was on the animation and everything. So you’re kinda giving back and forth, these things are happening in a musical. The songs get scored, the goals, you know. So there were goals to be scored. And they were very, very generous in letting me do the dunking.
You have three really wonderful songs here. It really leads to a beautiful ending for this special, Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical. What is the biggest challenge of having these songs fit into the story and serve a narrative purpose? Because the best musicals, the songs definitely move the plot forward. They’re not just background. So what is the biggest challenge of making it fit and propelling the story forward?
Ben Folds: Well, for me, the challenge equals opportunity because it makes a thing that you’re making all juicier, “Oh, this is gonna be hard. Each song can be taken as these are the challenges in the song. They were pretty clear challenges as they emerged. So I enter in the middle of the script. So, it’s kinda like, well, “Ben, here’s how it’s gone. The first two songs have been done by this great songwriting team. It’s set up, they’re propelling you into camp world with great expectation, great happiness, talking Sally into being happy about it. Happy, happy, yay.” Now it’s like, they gotta go into a hole for a while. The first hole we go into is sung by Charlie Brown.
Just the fact that a cat like this, Charlie Brown, is even gonna sing to us, to me, is challenge number one. A waltz is a good way to distance. It’s why old men sing waltz is they don’t wanna be too wet. You know, they want to be, they wanna retain their dignity. They want you to stand back a little bit. When you make something in 3/4 time, that’s what’s happening. You’re like, “I got a lot to say.”
It’s very deep. It comes from a wisdom to place, and I’m not gonna cry on your shoulder and you need to back up. And that’s what a waltz does. A major key gives you even more, less wet, less overtly emotional. Charlie Brown, as a character created a half a century ago, is very nuanced character.
He could be misconstrued as depressive. He’s not a laugh-a-minute, but he also doesn’t tend to flip out about things. He sort of exists in this, “Oh, good grief.” You know, the weight of the world. So get having someone sing about the sadness of something that they’ve loved through their childhood being mowed down by someone building a massive development. That was the challenge.
I think Charlie Brown is simultaneously a very young man, but he’s also old. He’s like an old soul. So for him to reminisce about when he was light back when we were light, when we were only children, he is a child. But the thing is, is kids have the weight of the world on their shoulders. And, you know, I made a joke in where I said you know, let’s look through pictures and people, places that we’ve been, all these things that we’ve known for five weeks.
That’s the punchline of the song. But it’s actually real. I mean, kids have to learn lifetimes in weeks, where people my age don’t learn anything else. Your age, you got a couple more things to learn. Those things happen over time, but we slow down and we get dumber as we get old. With kids, they’re at their highest intelligence. That age, they take everything in. So to say that they wouldn’t be sad for a whole lifetime and generations is to underestimate them. So that was the challenge in song one.
Ben Folds: Song two, the challenge was that the script didn’t make it clear why they were in a hole and came out to the top ’cause the sun came out. That’s what happens in the story. It’s like, “Oh man, we were gonna have a concert and save camp, but guess we can’t. It’s raining. Oh, the sun came out, story over.” That’s what I inherited. I just thought, well, let’s dig into the deep.
Well, that is Charlie Brown. And he is going to be myopically focused on not looking up, looking down at his feet, one at a time. “Look, it may not happen, but I can’t give up. I’m not gonna celebrate this. There’s nothing to celebrate. I’m not giving up.” And that suits his personality. Kids at the camp are like, “look up. It’s raining. That means that you can’t do the concert.” And he is like, “I’m not looking up.” But then the sun comes out and he goes, “I’m still looking down one foot at a time. I gotta keep going.” And they’re going, “no, no, no, you can stop that now. You gotta look up. It’s raining.” And he’s like, I’m not looking up now […] And then he looks up and that’s the song.
So in that way, they don’t earn the weather, but they earn the right, or he earns the right to say that no matter what, when the chips were down, he was still pushing. ’cause You never know what’s gonna happen. I think kids should see a world in which there’s no hope, but you keep trying. That’s when every major accomplishment in history was ever made is when it looked like there was no hope. You think that, I don’t know. Winston Churchill looked like a nutcase. I mean, it was surrounded.
They were definitely not gonna survive that, and they did. ’cause He wouldn’t look up. He just looked down. And probably when it was over, he probably didn’t, well, you know, these guys all died before their time. But, you know, he couldn’t see the world that that, that it could’ve created.
Then the last song had the challenge of being, like, “We Are The World” meets “Walking on Sunshine.” I didn’t want it to be like, “Yay, we saved the world. We saved camp. Yay.” I want it to be a little bit of that. But also to say, “Look, we inherited some crap from our parents […] but we’re gonna do the best.” Our best may not be good enough, meaning that they may pass a turd onto the next generation too. But they’ve done the best they can. They’ve improved upon us.
That’s the nuance that you’re allowed in Charlie Brown and Peanuts.
Thanks to Ben Folds for taking the time to talk about Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical.
Source: Comingsoon.net