This Perfect Album Will Make You Miss Saturday Mornings All Over Again

Although not quite dead, Saturday morning cartoons were on their way out in the 1990s, taking with it a sacred ritual shared by those of a certain generation. Long before the days of YouTube and TikTok, kids would have to wait an entire week before those glorious Saturday mornings to see the adventures of Scooby-Doo or the Super Friends. The ritual was very much the same for everyone: wake up, pour Frosted Flakes into a cereal bowl (milk optional), turn on the television, and park your ass for a good four hours in front of it.

Then, in 1995, a savior appeared in record stores: Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits. No, it couldn’t force networks to reverse course and start airing cartoons again. But what it did manage to do was perfectly evoke the nostalgia of those mornings through covers of iconic cartoon theme songs. Not just any covers, but ones performed by a who’s who of popular and alternative artists, breathing new life into the songs and dragging them into the modern age, the likes of Violent Femmes, Sublime, and Collective Soul. Produced by Ralph Sall, who paired artists with songs, Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits is the perfect album you didn’t know you needed to have.

‘Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits’ Has Covers That Are Faithful to the Originals

Anyone who was anyone had a tribute album in the 1990s. Red Hot + Blue served as a tribute to the classics of Cole Porter (and a far better one than the 2004 biopic De-Lovely). Tulare Dust: A Tribute to Merle Haggard had various artists covering the songs of the country music legend, while Kiss My A**: Kiss Regrooved saw the likes of Garth Brooks, covering Beth, and Anthrax, with a great cover of She, taking on jewels from the classic rock band’s catalog. And Duran Duran, for some reason.

Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits may have been released among the deluge of other 1990s tribute albums, but it’s an outlier in the best of ways. Where other tribute albums saw artists put their spin on the songs of specific artists, Saturday Morning took on a genre: friendly, upbeat songs meant to capture the attention of their target audience and provide a general idea of what they were in for if they hung around for the half-hour. Really, it doesn’t get any simpler than “you’ll have some fun now with me and all the gang,” a line from the Fat Albert theme (which also has the regrettable-in-hindsight line “Bill’s gonna show you a thing or two”).

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The songs on the album fall, more or less, into two categories, the first of which are faithful, reimagined recreations. Matthew Sweet, who joyfully admits to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? being one of his favorites, adds elements of his own, like a lively guitar and a surf-rock vibe, to the theme while keeping the structure and pace of it intact. Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donelly capture the unabashed fun of the Josie and the Pussycats‘ theme, lending energy to their authentic take, while Mary Lou Lord and Semisonic do the same with “Sugar, Sugar” from The Archie Show, fitting given the former’s connection to the latter.

’Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits’ Succeeds in Its Reinventions

But Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits succeeds in the reinventions of classic cartoon themes, the second category. As well as the covers that hew closer to the originals, the album’s greatest moments are from artists that take the cartoon song and completely reinvent it in their own image. Butthole Surfers‘ cover of Underdog absolutely drives with the drumming of King Coffey a masterclass, and a fun nod vocally to the original. Sublime give Hong Kong Phooey an extreme makeover with their ska punk sensibilities, with a dash of reggae. And Dig‘s cover of Fat Albert is punk-funk perfection.

Two songs in particular stand out, given how much of themselves the artists put into them. “Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah (Means I Love You),” a song from The Jetsons‘ episode “A Date with Jet Screamer,” is given the Violent Femmes treatment. It has the acoustic folk-punk sound so uniquely related to the band, and benefits greatly from their always-present sense of humor. The other is the Ramones‘ cover of the iconic Spider-Man theme song. You know the one: “Spider-Man, Spider-Man/Does whatever a spider can.” It is pure Ramones, a high-energy, balls-to-the-wall punk rock classic, with their legendary “1-2-3-4!” introductory countdown, that deserves to be mentioned alongside “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment.”

Saturday Morning: Cartoon’s Greatest Hits isn’t just a novelty, but rather a loving tribute to an era with artists that get it. Each song is a testimony to the fun they had recording it, with an almost childlike passion and energy on each track. In a world that has largely forgotten what it’s like when a cereal bowl and Laff-A-Lympics were the most important thing about the weekend, there’s something to be said for an album that evokes that time. Perfectly.