As any career-minded person will tell you, if you work long enough and hard enough, you’ll inevitably forget about a few things along the way.
Lin-Manuel Miranda had exactly that experience during a Friday appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Fallon challenged the Hamilton creator to a Disney-themed game of “One Second Songs,” a late show game in which — you’ve probably figured this out already based on the title alone — competitors must guess the title of a particular song after hearing a one-second clip.
The Disney theme introduced a similarly obvious twist: The competition focused solely on musical numbers from Disney movies. Miranda had a solid showing right off the bat, correctly spotting a popular number from Moana for which he has a writing credit. He and Fallon both had no troubles breezing through an easy stretch of clues to start things off. But then Miranda faced his third clue.
The one-second clip has no words, just some jangly slice of melody that sounds like it’s coming from a vibraphone. Miranda is immediately stumped and asks to hear the clip again. Nothing. Then Fallon tries to figure it out, and quickly fails. So he accepts defeat and asks for the answer. As the familiar melody starts to play and the lyrics “I can always hear him sort of mumbling and mumbling” play, Miranda buries his face in his hands. Clearly this is “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the chart-topping Encanto hit that Miranda wrote.
He’s understandably embarrassed, but that clip is ridiculously non-specific and difficult to decode compared to the ones that preceded it. The Tonight Show producers knew who their guest was, too, so you can bet this was intentionally built to be a stumper. The result is a very funny and relatable TV moment where Miranda’s impressive and ever-growing resume finally catches up with him.
