Like many kids in America in the 70s and 80s, I grew up on Schoolhouse Rock — short animated musical segments that played between Saturday morning cartoons. They were colorful, weird, and endlessly catchy. I probably learned more from them than I did from half my teachers.

The other day I saw headlines about some “No More Kings” protests across the U.S., and without thinking, my brain cued up exactly the song you’d expect. That set off a whole nostalgic spiral, and songs I hadn't heard in decades appeared in my head. You know what? They hold up.

So for this week’s Three Tune Tuesday, here are three of the best Schoolhouse Rock songs — songs that made learning genuinely fun, and stuck with us for decades.

“No More Kings”

The cartoon that launched this whole post. It’s an upbeat colonial history lesson packed into two minutes, told from the perspective of settlers moving west and cutting ties with King George. The melody is folksy, the animation is charmingly odd, and the lyrics are surprisingly smart. It’s basically Hamilton for eight-year-olds—minus the rap battles.

It opens with a smug King George — more of a foppish cartoon than a villain — commanding his colonies to send him their money and be grateful for the privilege. And it ends with the colonies asserting themselves: no more kings. The refrain feels quaint in 2025 — until you see it scrawled across protest banners by people worried that the executive branch is starting to act like a throne again.

Yeah, it's not entirely accurate and skips a bit — basically American propaganda — but hey, at least it's catchy.

Here is a better sung version by Pavement - Listen Here.

“Mr. Morton”

Schoolhouse Rock did more than just history. Here is a catchy grammar song that is still stuck in my head from childhood.

“Mr. Morton” teaches the parts of a sentence with surprising emotional depth. Mr. Morton is a shy man who loves Miss Murphy — and slowly, over the course of the song, he finds the courage to act. It’s grammar set to a love story, and somehow it works. The repetition helps the grammar stick, and the slow groove helps it go down easy.

If you like that, you'll love the better sung version by Skee-Lo - Listen Here.

“Little Twelvetoes”

Moving onto math. I'm going to take an unexpected route. Most Schoolhouse Rock fans may expect "Three is the Magic Number", but let's vere off to a more unexpected one.

“Little Twelvetoes” imagines a friendly alien who naturally thinks in base-12 instead of base-10. And while that sounds like the setup for a number theory lecture, the song makes it work, simplifying the idea for kids. It walks you through multiplication by 12 with a kind of cosmic groove, and even introduces the idea that other number systems might be more efficient than the one we use.

I didn’t fully get the concept as a kid, but I remembered it, and later in life, when I stumbled on a discussion of the duodecimal system, I realized I’d already been primed for it by a barefoot cartoon alien with extra digits. Educational and trippy.

I don’t know if Schoolhouse Rock ever aired outside the U.S., but if you didn’t grow up with these, give them a listen anyway. They’re short, clever, full of heart, and proof that you can teach real ideas with just a good melody and a little creativity.

And yes, grammar, math, and history are all more fun with music.

If you did grow up with the show, any favorites?