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articles/steve-martin-s-only-murders-in-the-building-song-angel-in-flip-flops-gets-a-colorfully-trippy-music-video

Steve Martin and Only Murders in the Building’s (’90s) summer anthem officially has its own music video.

“Angel in Flip-Flops,” performed by Martin and featured in the Emmy-nominated series, dropped across all digital streaming music platforms Friday. But now Hulu’s released a rather animated music video for the tune, which has its own cover art and was produced by Paul Shaffer and co-written by Martin and Only Murders executive producer Kirker Butler.

The original breezy and beachy song can be heard during the opening of the show’s latest episode, as Martin’s Charles-Haden Savage performs the track — which he recorded in the ’90s for his hit TV crime show Brazzos — in his kitchen.

In the show, the song is described by Charles’ stepdaughter Lucy (Zoe Colletti) as a big hit in Germany, where it went to No. 83 on the charts but saw its upward momentum thwarted by the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s since been “sampled by, like, 50 rap stars.”

In the animated video, one sequence features rainbows flowing from a faceless woman’s flip-flops as she “pittah pottah’s” across a beach. Charles’ face is later seen etched into a mountainside as a bulldozer catches giant blue droplets and stops “my tear drops,” before the Brazzos star’s animated self breaks a giant yellow guitar pinata and a man with a bird head bangs out a trumpet solo.

Rainbows shooting from women’s mouths and eyes, men with strawberry heads and Charles playing the guitar while inside a tank are among the video’s other colorful highlights.

In a statement, Only Murders in the Building co-creator and showrunner John Hoffman said the idea for the song and video — specifically that “Charles-Haden Savage, at the height of his success with his original Brazzos series, maybe having recorded an album that did really well in Germany — came up in the show’s writers room.

“When we shared this idea with Steve Martin — well, I think it was a day (if even?) before Steve had a title and a tune making its way through his genius mind and we were more than off and running,” he said. “Steve dove in with Kirker Butler to craft a late 20th Century classic and then, incredibly, along came Paul Shaffer to arrange that classic that is now our ‘Angel InFlip-Flops.’  We’re all hoping for a revival of interest in the tune, of course — in Germany, and all parts of the world without walls!”