Op-Ed: We Don’t Need More Thanksgiving Music. We Already Have the Perfect Thanksgiving Anthem

Year after year, the public bemoans a “lack” of music to celebrate the “Thanksgiving season,” whatever that means. Where Christmas has a wealth of music from Mariah Carey and other lesser artists, and Halloween has such seminal classics as “The Monster Mash” and China Anne McClain’s “Calling All the Monsters,” the general public doesn’t recognize a similar canon for everyone’s favorite settler-colonial holiday.

I’m here to tell you they’re wrong.

We don’t, in fact, need more Thanksgiving music. For one, the holiday quite frankly doesn’t deserve more music. What exactly are we supposed to sing about? Tryptophan? The systemic oppression of indigenous peoples? The move of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving to Apple TV+?

But past that, contrary to popular belief, there exists a canon of Thanksgiving music, and I’m simply tired of us collectively pretending it isn’t there.

It’s time we stop erasing “Let’s Have a Kiki / Turkey Lurkey Time (Glee Cast Version) [feat. Sarah Jessica Parker].”

Lea Michele says “hunty” on the same track where Sarah Jessica Parker delivers a spoken word intro and somehow that’s not good enough for you sickos? Shameful. 

Those of you reading who have yet to be evangelized to this song are probably thinking, well, Taylor, what is a kiki and why should I have one? Luckily for you, Chris Colfer makes this abundantly clear. A kiki is, quite simply, “a party for calming all your nerves” (Colfer, 2012). Who could argue with that? 

When Lea Michele comes in with the transition to the 1968 Broadway classic “Turkey Lurkey Time,” there’s no going back. You can practically smell the drippings from the turkey baster as she and Colfer trade lines like “turkey lurkey” and “goosey loosey.”

“Let’s Have a Kiki / Turkey Lurkey Time (Glee Cast Version) [feat. Sarah Jessica Parker]” is, by all accounts, a modern classic. Hell, it’s just a straight up classic. Your grandchildren will be singing this at the Thanksgiving table. And so will their grandchildren (assuming we get to that point after the whole pandemic thing). 

We need to collectively grow up and embrace it instead of pretending it’s anything less than one of the seminal songs of our lifetime. And then we can have our kiki.