12 of pop culture’s best birthday moments

“Lisa It’s Your Birthday,” The Simpsons

To the casual viewer or skeptical parent, The Simpsons could appear to be a crude cartoon about belching and a family with an oaf for a dad. But true fans know The Simpsons, at its heart, works because its crazy family antics are rooted, at least to some extent, in love. Rarely is the show’s sentimental side on more prominent display than in season 3’s “Stark Raving Dad.”

This is the episode where Homer winds up in a mental institution and befriends a man who believes he’s Michael Jackson. Homer doesn’t know what the real Michael Jackson looks like so he tells his family Michael Jackson’s coming over for dinner, a rumor which Bart happily spreads.

But back to the birthday storyline: Bart and Lisa don’t always get along on The Simpsons. They are brother and sister after all. In this episode it happens to be Lisa’s birthday and Bart hasn’t been very nice to her. At the end of the episode, Bart surprises Lisa with an original song he and “Michael” wrote for her together, and it is, in a word, adorable. Lisa’s truly touched by her brother’s thoughtfulness.

Not only is the song heartfelt and unexpected coming from Bart Simpson, it’s maybe one of the earwormyiest songs we’ve ever heard. No, seriously. Listen to it and good luck getting it out of your head. Simpsons creator Matt Groening has confirmed the real Michael Jackson really did do the voice of Leon Kompowsky (the character who thinks he’s MJ’s real name) using a pseudonym for the episode, but he sadly didn’t record the vocals on “Lisa It’s Your Birthday.”

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We’re going to go ahead and pretend that he did anyway.

-Gwendolyn Purdom, editor