“Barney & Friends” music director Bob Singleton didn’t warm everyone’s heart with his catchy tunes.
Singleton appeared on the new podcast “Generation Barney” and recalled receiving death threats from people who hated the songs he made for the children’s TV series.
“When I was nominated for a Grammy, a local talk radio station said, ‘Hey, this is great.’ Then someone called in and said, ‘I wish I could get my hands around the neck of that guy. I would just, I would really like to take him out,’” Singleton said, per People.
He went on, “My email address was out there, and I was getting people sending me emails … that [were] threatening me and my family with horrible, horrible death and dismemberment and terrible things.”
Singleton called the death threats “frightening,” and revealed one of her haters even confronted her about disliking her music in person.
“I remember going to a luncheon once and they’ve got us sat at a table,” she explained. “I said I had been the music director on Barney and this one guy — and I’m sure he was well-meaning — said ‘Wow, my kids loved you but I just wanted to kill you.’”
“In that moment, I have to think, ‘Okay, is this somebody that I need to watch for in the parking lot,’ you know?” Singleton added. “Or is he just, is that just his way of going ‘My kids liked it, I didn’t’. So it was awkward.”
“Barney & Friends” was about America’s favorite purple dinosaur and aired from 1992 to 2010.
The series was based on “Barney & the Backyard Gang,” which Singleton worked on as the music director for its final season in 1991. He was then in charge of the music on the first three seasons of “Barney & Friends.”
For producing the show’s debut album “Barney’s Favorites, Volume 1,” Singleton was nominated for the Best Musical Album for Children at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards in 1994.
Selena Gomez, who got her start on “Barney & Friends” alongside Demi Lovato, looked back on the childhood role in 2018.
“It was amazing to be able to be 7 years old and experience that. It was wild,” the “Only Murders in the Building” star said in an interview with BBC Radio.
Gomez also revealed that she tried to make a cast reunion happen a few years earlier but was told she “couldn’t be on the show [because] I’m not in the right union.”
Lovato, 32, told Howard Stern last year that she “got teased at school” for being on “Barney” at age 10.
“I don’t remember what they teased me for,” she continued. “I just remember going home from school and my mom saying, ‘You’re laughing all the way to the bank.’”
