One of These Things

"One of These Things" was a song written by Joe Raposo, Jon Stone and Bruce Hart and regularly used on Sesame Street for sketches where viewers would be shown a group of four items, one of which was different from the other three, and they would have to identify the item which didn't belong. In a 1999 episode, in which the Dingers plan on having a ding-a-long, the cast sang a variation called "One of These Dings".

A similar game was played to a different song written by Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss in 1970 and called "Three of These Things Belong Together", with variations such as "Two of These Things", "Here Are Some Things That Belong Together", and "Three of These Kids Belong Together". (The last version involved a four-way split screen with three children performing one activity, plus a fourth child "doing his own thing". Sometimes it was called "One of These Kids".) In some instances of the game, kids were encouraged to find more than one different answer, depending on how the things could be categorized.

This game has been used in segments starring William Wegman's dogs, and in animated form, melody only, with footprints. It was also the basis for a game in one "Journey to Ernie" segment. A line of the song is included in the theme for the "This is the Game Today" segments, and some of the games from "This is the Game Today" include this song.

Versions (animated)
A series of animated segments from season 4 featured an instrumental of the song over visuals of footprints or shoes in a graph.

Releases

 * Audio
 * The Sesame Street Book & Record (1970)
 * One of These Things/Up and Down (single, 1970)
 * Susan Sings Songs from Sesame Street (1970)
 * Somebody Come and Play (1974)
 * 60 Favorite Songs from Sesame Street (1975)
 * 25 Greatest Hits (1975)
 * Susan and Bob Sing: One of These Things/What Are Kids Called (single, 1976)
 * 10th Anniversary Album (1978)
 * Platinum Too (1997)
 * Video
 * Play-Along Games and Songs (Cookie Monster version)
 * Old School: Volume 1 (in episodes 0001, 0131, 0276, 0406, and 0536)
 * Old School: Volume 2 (in episode 1056)
 * Let's Play Games (kids with umbrellas version) (on bonus CD-ROM)
 * 40 Years of Sunny Days (Cookie Monster version)
 * Publications
 * Sesame Street Songbook Vol. 1
 * The Sesame Street Songbook (1971, 1992 and 2007 editions)
 * Online
 * YouTube (Cookie Monster version)

Mentions

 * This song was included in a 2004 Subway commercial, where it was called "One of These Subs".
 * Dave Grohl, from the Foo Fighters, admits that he was influenced by "One of These Things" while writing the song "The Pretender".
 * The Mindless Self-Indulgence song "Unsociable" has the line: "One of these shapes is not like the other holes," which is very similar to this song.
 * In the tour Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity, Peanut comments on Jose Jalapeno calling Jeff "Senor Heff" and then "Senor Cheff". Jeff Dunham says it's the same thing and Peanut replies "No it's not! Didn't you watch Sesame Street?" Then he sings a short clip of "One of These Things" singing "One of these things just doesn't belong here". Then he parodies the end of the show by saying that "this show was sponsored by the sound CH."