Barney & Friends musical director Bob Singleton has revealed he received multiple “horrible” death threats over the infectious songs featured in the show.
The children’s show, which was led by a singing purple dinosaur named Barney, was a major hit from 1992 to 2010.
Speaking on a new episode of the podcast Generation Barney, Singleton recalled that the show’s critical acclaim was matched by disturbing feedback from viewers.
“When I was nominated for a Grammy, a local talk radio station said, ‘Hey, this is great,’” he said. “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.’”
The rise of the internet made it even easier for disgruntled viewers to contact and threaten Singleton.
“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,” said the producer and composer.
“It was frightening. I remember going to a luncheon once and they’ve got us sat at a table. 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?’ Or is he just, is that just his way of going, ‘My kids liked it, I didn’t’. So, it was awkward.”
In 2022, the documentary I Love You, You Hate Me explored why so many adults despised Barney.
The Independent’s Eloise Hendy wrote about some of the more lurid stories included in the documentary, asking: “Did you know it’s believed that the Pentagon used Barney music as a torture device, forcing prisoners to listen to his saccharine and relentlessly peppy theme song for 24 hours straight?
“Did you know that the son of Sheryl Leach, one of the show’s creators, once shot his neighbor multiple times in the chest? Or that one of the very first websites in existence was named ‘alt.dinosaur.Barney.die.die.die’? Or that there was once a roleplaying game called ‘The Jihad to Destroy Barney,’ supposedly dedicated to the ‘general eradication of Barney the Dinosaur from television airwaves, the internet, all media, and the face of the Earth?’”