"Let's Go to the Mall" is a song written by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother. The song was performed by Canadian actress Cobie Smulders in the role of Robin Scherbatsky, who has a secret past of being a teenage Canadian pop star and adopted the stage name Robin Sparkles. Thomas and Bays originally came up with the idea and spent weeks developing the story with writer Kourtney Kang. The song was first featured in the form of a faux music video in the episode "Slap Bet" that aired on November 20, 2006, before the song was digitally released as a single on September 4, 2007. The track later appeared on the soundtrack album How I Met Your Music (2012).
"Let's Go to the Mall" is a teen pop song, in which Robin invites people to come to the shopping mall and have fun. The lyrics contain references to both the 1980s and Canadian culture, such as jelly bracelets and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. "Let's Go to the Mall" garnered generally positive reviews from both television and music critics, who praised its catchiness and humor. Several media publications listed it among the show's best musical sequences. It has sold 4,000 digital downloads in the United States as of August 2008, and the music video attracted more than 300,000 viewers on MySpace and the CBS official website. Robin Sparkles became a running gag throughout the show; Smulders later reprised the role in "Sandcastles in the Sand" (2008), "Glitter" (2010), and her alter-ego as Robin Daggers in "P.S. I Love You" (2013).
Background
Cobie Smulders played Robin Scherbatsky, a devoted broadcast journalist who moves from Canada for a job in New York, in the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother. During its first season, creators and executive producers Craig Thomas and Carter Bays wanted to make the character Canadian after learning that Smulders is also Canadian. "[Thomas and Bay] thought [being Canadian] was exotic—which is the very first time I've ever been called that," Smulders said. Robin's Canadian side was initially intended to reflect on "the absurdity of American culture", but the creators later turned it into a medium for satire and jokes instead. "It's such filthy lucre for writers... We just couldn't stop ourselves," Bays said. Robin was first revealed to be Canadian in "Belly Full of Turkey".
In June 2006, executive producer Greg Malins submitted the idea of a music video starring one of the characters, and he picked out Robin. After watching a young Matt LeBlanc play a cameo role in Alanis Morissette's music video for "Walk Away", the creators decided to create Robin's secret past of being a Canadian pop star who "never became legit". The creators worked with writer Kourtney Kang to develop the story into an episode, feeling like they "finally cracked it" after weeks of work. Kang said that in an earlier version of the story, Robin was part of a duo and had to go back to Canada to help "resurrect her career". She was excited about the storyline, saying "I love the '80s [...] So this was a gift from the heavens."
In the episode, character Robin Scherbatsky revealed that she was a Canadian teenage pop star, using the stage name Robin Sparkles, which embarrassed her as an adult. "Let's Go to the Mall", released in 1993 on an album called Make It Sparkle by Dominant Records, became a minor hit in the country. 16-year-old Robin used to travel to shopping malls and sing the song, while living off of Orange Julius and Wetzel's Pretzels. Robin explained that despite being recorded in the early 1990s, the song and video were influenced by the late 1980s style because the 1980s "didn't come to Canada until '93".
Writing and recording
Bays and Thomas enjoy writing songs together. When they were working as writers for American Dad! and Late Show with David Letterman, they did several songs and fake musical numbers for the shows. They composed and performed "Hey Beautiful", the theme song of How I Met Your Mother, credited as The Solids. For "Let's Go to the Mall", the creators were inspired by Morissette's "cheesy" material from her pre-Jagged Little Pill years. The lyrics came after the title, with the writers using the name "Let's Go To The Mall" as their inspiration. According to Thomas, the song originally "started off too big" and contained several acts. Eventually, it was incorporated into Robin and Ted's "small relationship story" about trust and secrets, which Thomas believed was "the only reason the episode came together".