List song
Alist song,also called alaundry list songor acatalog song,is a song based wholly or in part on a list.[1]: xiii [2][3][4][5][6]Unlike topical songs with a narrative and a cast of characters, list songs typically develop by working through a series of information, often comically, articulating their images additively, and sometimes use items of escalating absurdity.[7][8]
The form as a defining feature of an oral tradition dates back to earlyclassical antiquity,[9][10]where it played an important part of earlyhexameter poetryfor oral bards likeHomerandHesiod.[11][12]
In classicalopera,the list song has its own genre, thecatalogue aria,that was especially popular in Italianopera buffaandcomic operain the latter half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Leporello's aria"Madamina, il catalogo è questo"(lit. '"Little lady, this is the catalogue"'), also nicknamed The Catalogue Aria,[13][14]is a prominent example, and often mentioned as a direct antecedent to the 20th-century musical's list song.[15][16][17][18]
The list song is a frequent element of 20th-century popular music and became aBroadwaystaple.[19]Cole Porter,Irving Berlin,Noël Coward,andStephen Sondheimare composers and lyricists who have used the form.[20][21]The very first commercial recording of a Cole Porter tune was his list song "I've a Shooting Box in Scotland" originally fromSee America First(1913).[22][23]Berlin followed soon after with the list song "When I Discovered You" from his first complete Broadway scoreWatch Your Step(1914).[24]
Porter would frequently return to the list song form, notable examples include "You're the Top"from the 1934 musicalAnything Goes,[25][26][27]"Friendship", one of Porter's wittiest list songs, fromDuBarry Was a Lady,[28]: 483 and "Farming" and "Let's Not Talk About Love" both fromLet's Face It!(1942), and both written forDanny Kayeto showcase his ability with tongue-twisting lyrics.[29]In "You're the Top", Porter pays tribute to his colleague Irving Berlin by including the item "You're the top! You're a Berlin ballad."[30][31][32]
Irving Berlin would likewise often write songs in the genre; notable examples include "My Beautiful Rhinestone Girl" fromFace the Music(1932), a list song that starts off with a sequence ofnegativesimiles,[33]"Outside of That I Love You" fromLouisiana Purchase,[34]and "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)"a challenge-duet, and Berlin's starkest antithesis-driven list song,[35]"You Can't Get a Man with a Gun",[36]and "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly",[37]all three from the 1946musicalAnnie Get Your Gun.
List of list songs[edit]
Examples of list songs, and their composers/performers, include the following.
Patter songs[edit]
Manypatter songsfall into this genre such as:
- KoKo'sLittle list songfromThe Mikado(see "As Some Day It May Happen" above)
- "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)"(Kurt WeillandIra Gershwin) (see "Tschaikowsky" above)
- "TheMajor-General's Song"(Gilbert and Sullivan)
- "If You Want a Receipt" fromPatience(Gilbert and Sullivan)
References[edit]
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LIST SONGS The list song has been a useful tool of musical theatre ever since earliest operatic times. One of the "hits' of Mozart's day was to be found in Don Giovanni at the spot where Da Ponte's libretto calls for the Don's servant to list all the...
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laundry-list song—As the name suggests, this song type catalogs a list.
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... commanding attention and involving the listener. Gives examples of categories of songs ranging from the love song through the laundry-list song to the novelty song such as "Speedy Gonzales." Gives blueprints for writing and assignments.
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The Laundry List Song. These songs run down a list of many items that all add up to one big aha! moment. The chorus, hook and/or title usually reveal the juicy nugget of truth that all the things in the list add up to. A great example is "Before He...
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What would the West's greatest epic, The Iliad, be without its catalogue of ships and Mozart's greatest opera, Don Giovanni, without Leporello's list aria and America's greatest songwriter, Cole Porter, without list-based ditties like "You're the Top"...
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He praises Mozart for conjoining Leporello's first aria to the Overture, because the two characters are closely joined in the opera. Next, Leporello's List Song, 'the most epic moment in the opera', is singled out. But this is not, Kierkegaard...
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It is a list song reminiscent of Leporello's boastful enumeration of his master's conquests in Mozart's Don Giovanni: Esmerelda, Then Griselda, And the third was Rosalie. Lovely Lakme Tried to track me, But I fell for fair Marie. Eleanora...
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I'VE A SHOOTING BOX IN SCOTLAND (Paranoia and See America First) Written in 1913, published in 1916.... Lyrics: This is a list song par excellence, with the admixture of contemporary and antique, classic and voguish that was to become...
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'You're the Top' was unquestionably the most popular song from Anything Goes when the show first opened... In the midst of the furor over the novelty of the lyrics there was some indecision: should it be called a catalogue-song or a laundry-list-song? An eclectic list of rhyming superlatives, the song at the height of its popularity inspired hundreds of...
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Porter wrote the most effective list songs because their energy was matched by their cleverness. "You're the Top" is considered Porter's (or anyone else's) best list song. The enthusiasm for describing the person who is "the top" moves from the...
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Porter was also the king of the "list song," featuring his characteristic clever rhymes, contemporary references, and comic metaphors: You're the top! You're an Arrow collar You're the top! You're a Coolidge dollar You're the nimble tread of the...
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... list song like Porter's "You're the Top" (1934) flaunts such superlatives as the Louvre, Botticelli, Keats, and "a Berlin ballad".
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In his list of things that are "the top" Cole Porter included a "Berlin ballad."
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Furthermore, Cole Porter included "a Berlin ballad" among the superlatives lavishly listed in his alliterative lyrics for "You're the Top." A Russian immigrant and son of a Jewish cantor, Berlin achieved tremendous fame in 1911 for "Alexander's...
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... In "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," Berlin shifts into full Dogpatch mode, a list song that describes Annie's ignorant but...
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'A' You're Adorable "(1941) is a plucky list song in which an admirer goes through the alphabet finding doting...
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... Girl' was a 'laundry list' song, being a list of possibilities describing what a boy without a girl could be: after Newley sang the line, 'A boy without a girl is like a ship without a rudder,' Fraser suggested the next should be, 'A boy without a girl is...
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... "All I Really Want to Do," a comic, Cole Porter-style "list" song celebrating fraternal love...
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Even though he could write such deceptively simple songs for films, the primary showcase for Porter's urbane style... One of his last great list songs, "At Long Last Love" (1938), takes Porter's characteristically worldweary lover and has him...
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It's less satisfying than the release of "You're the Top" (or of another great Porter list song, "At Long Last Love" ), which develops seamlessly out of the main strain and is in fact an extension of it.
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... During the ride The Divine Comedy's list song 'The Booklovers' (1994) plays on the cab radio...
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"My Funny Valentine" is a list song. It catalogues the beloved's physical limitations, and the irrelevance of those limitations, one at a time. Most lyrics are collections of one-liners, for fairly obvious reasons. The demands of rhyme and scansion...
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It was not the first of Porter's many characteristic "list" songs, as tunes like "I've a Shooting Box in Scotland" (from See America First), "When I Had a Uniform On," and "Poor Young Millionaire" had previously included elements of the...
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"Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3" followed, a list song with an irresistible opening chant ( "Why don't you get back in bed!...
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This amusing laundry list song "catalogues numerous inadequate substitutions for feminine company, ranging from volley ball to letters from home. The frustrated men pace seemingly at random yet in rhythm while singing—movement,...
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