FEIST / PHOTO BY MUHAMMAD ASRANUR

Pardon the jaded adult inside us (especially because he's hungry and hasn't napped in a while), but generally, the paradox of pop stars reworking their adult-themed lyrics for Sesame Street's preternaturally peppy musical performances comes off a tad creepy to anyone over 13 months. Of course, a built-in bias leads us to be relatively less appalled by Feist's reworking of "1234" (which has been adjusted to wax poetic about "monsters walking across the floor") in a segment set to air on Aug. 11.

Fortunately, there remain enough clear-cut examples of disturbing interactions between musicians and elementarily educated Muppets to poke fun at while leaving Leslie out of the muck. And if the underlying throughline connecting guest spots by the likes of R.E.M., *NSync, and Hootie and the Blowfish could be summarized in one phrase, it would probably be: Kids, don't talk to strangers.

Read on for our list of the five most supremely slack-jawing Sesame singalongs:

Check out the list on Page 2... >>