EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

Marge Vs The Monorail: An Oral History

It’s a classic Simpsons episode. 

With its grand scale, silly asides and abundance of absurdist humour, Marge Vs The Monorail represented a stark departure from the show’s established formula.

And while initial reactions were mixed, it’s now widely regarded as one of the show’s finest. 

This oral history from Vice take us through the origins of the episode and speaks to writers and showrunners from back in the day. 

“Every single word of the monorail song was unchanged from Conan’s first draft, which is impressive. My niche on the show in those days was to actually write the tunes to the songs. I wrote a bunch of songs, so I was assigned to set the monorail song to music. It’s sort of like, “Bum, bum, bum, bum. I think I’m done!”

It’s barely a song. It’s just sort of a rhythm and “Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!” The notion that Conan and I co-wrote that song is laughable.

“I’ve told Conan over the years that he had his part in that song. Elton John, meaning me, needs Bernie Taupin, meaning him.”

(Vice, approximately 22 minutes reading time)

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