20 best original songs from TV, from The Simpsons to Empire
By Sundi Rose
“Let’s Go to the Mall”
The show: How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother was a beloved and long-running sitcom that ended in a really disappointing way to a lot of fans. We finally met “the mother,” but as it turns out, it didn’t even matter, because Ted winds up with Robin after all.
This still feels like a giant waste of time for a lot of us, but without Robin, we would have never met her pop singer alter ego, Robin Sparkles. In a time before she met Ted and the rest of the gang, she was a Canadian superstar, doing her best work on the mall circuit. This bit of background on Robin was wildly popular with fans, and the show later doubled down on her previous persona, trotting it out to boost ratings.
Best of the best: “Let’s Go To The Mall” (“Slap Bet,” season 2)
This particular bit of HIMYM lore is particularly entertaining because it is so humiliating. By the time Robin hits New York, she’s a (mostly) put together, successful woman, so seeing her reduced to this bubblegum ’90s disaster, is just too good.
The gang thought so too, because after viewing “Let’s Go To The Mall” and its follow up hit “Sandcastles in the Sand,” everyone, understandably, has so many questions. The reason why her look is so decidedly ’80s, instead of reflecting the 1993 release date, is because Canada, as she explains, always late to the fashion game. She also admitted that she grew up eating Wetzel’s Pretzels and slurping Orange Juliuses — more fodder for the relentless teasing machine.
The best lyric(s):
“C’mon Jessica, c’mon Tori,
Let’s go to the mall, you won’t be sorry,
Put on your jelly bracelets,
And your cool graffiti coat,
At the mall, havin’ fun is what it’s all about”