Eric Church Reveals the Hilarious Story Behind His Big Bird Halloween Costume Gone Wrong

When most people think of Eric Church, they picture the strong and silent type, a true badass known for his signature Ray-Ban Wayfarers, ballcap, jeans, and boots. So it’s hard to imagine the country superstar ever trading that look for a Sesame Street costume. But believe it or not, it actually happened one Halloween.

Church shared the memorable story with his record label, revealing that his “favorite Halloween costume” came during his first year of college.

“There’s this thing they do every year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Halloween on Franklin Street. We drove down from Boone, North Carolina. I had a bunch of friends that went to University of North Carolina, and we didn’t have costumes and didn’t realize until we were on the way that we had to have costumes,” he explained. 

On the way, they stopped at a costume store in Greensboro, North Carolina, but because it was already Halloween night, they “couldn’t find anything.” They wound up driving around town and finally stumbled upon something they could make work. 

“We ended up finding this hole in the wall place, but they had the full costume, Sesame Street outfits. The real deal. The real ones [with] feathers and fur. We were Elmo, Cookie Monster and I was Big Bird, and the Big Bird was the actual Big Bird,” he shared. “It’s about 7-foot-4, and you looked out of the body and then you had these straps that went on since the head was a lot higher.” 

Church went on to explain that there was “a lot of beer” involved in that particular Halloween celebration, and as the night went on, things started to go a little sideways. 

“…As the night went on, my straps broke, so the head would pivot. And so, I would be walking one way and the head would be facing the other, and it just became this funny…I didn’t know the head was on backwards. I had no idea. I see out of the body, so I’m just kinda walking around and people were talking to my ass-end,” he recalled with a laugh. “The whole time people’d come up and start talking and go, ‘Hey, turn around.’ And I’d turn around, and they’d go, ‘No turn around.’ It was a mess. That year, there was no other Big Bird on Franklin Street.”

While the Big Bird costume might not have been Eric Church’s most flattering momentum it’s certainly one of his favorite Halloween memories.