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A list song, also called a laundry list song or a catalog song, is a song based wholly or in part on a list. 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.

The form as a defining feature of an oral tradition dates back to early classical antiquity, where it played an important part of early hexameter poetry for oral bards like Homer and Hesiod.

In classical opera, the list song has its own genre, the catalogue aria, that was especially popular in Italian opera buffa and comic opera in 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, is a prominent example, and often mentioned as a direct antecedent to the 20th-century musical's list song.

The list song is a frequent element of 20th-century popular music and became a Broadway staple. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Noël Coward, and Stephen Sondheim are composers and lyricists who have used the form. The very first commercial recording of a Cole Porter tune was his list song "I've a Shooting Box in Scotland" originally from See America First (1913). Berlin followed soon after with the list song "When I Discovered You" from his first complete Broadway score Watch Your Step (1914).

Porter would frequently return to the list song form, notable examples include "You're the Top" from the 1934 musical Anything Goes, "Friendship", one of Porter's wittiest list songs, from DuBarry Was a Lady, and "Farming" and "Let's Not Talk About Love" both from Let's Face It! (1942), and both written for Danny Kaye to showcase his ability with tongue-twisting lyrics. 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."

Irving Berlin would likewise often write songs in the genre; notable examples include "My Beautiful Rhinestone Girl" from Face the Music (1932), a list song that starts off with a sequence of negative similes, "Outside of That I Love You" from Louisiana Purchase, and "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)" a challenge-duet, and Berlin's starkest antithesis-driven list song, "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun", and "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly", all three from the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun.

List of list songs

Examples of list songs, and their composers/performers, include the following.

Patter songs

Many patter songs fall into this genre such as:

• KoKo's Little list song from The Mikado (see "As Some Day It May Happen" above)
• "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)" (Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin) (see "Tschaikowsky" above)
• "The Major-General's Song" (Gilbert and Sullivan)
• "If You Want a Receipt" from Patience (Gilbert and Sullivan)

References

1. ^ Hischak, T.S. (2002). The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-31992-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
2. ^ Citron, S. (1997). The Musical from the Inside Out. Ivan R. Dee. pp. 195 ff. ISBN 978-1-4617-2096-6. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
3. ^ Hischak, T.S.; Robinson, M.A. (2009). The Disney Song Encyclopedia. Scarecrow Press. p. 316. ISBN 978-0-8108-6938-7. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
4. Konas, G.P. (1993). From Gershwin to Sondheim: The Pulitzer Prize-winning Musicals. University of California, Davis. p. 287. Retrieved 3 August 2018. laundry-list song—As the name suggests, this song type catalogs a list.
5. The Musical Mainstream. Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress. 1979. p. 63. Retrieved 3 August 2018. ... 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.
6. ^ Forbes, A. (2013). Songlab: A Songwriting Playbook for Teens. Blackstone Publishing. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-62064-248-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
7. McLamore, A. (2017). Musical Theater: An Appreciation. Taylor & Francis. p. 532. ISBN 978-1-317-19104-9. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
8. Hale-Evans, R. (2006). Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain. Hacks Series. O'Reilly Media. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-596-10153-4. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
9. Minchin, Elizabeth (1996). "The Performance of Lists and Catalogues in the Homeric Epics". In Worthington, I. (ed.). Voice Into Text: Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece; [... Chapters Were ... Delivered as Papers at a Conference Entitled 'Voice Into Text' ... Hobart, Australia from 3rd-8th July 1994.]. Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1; The Near and Middle East. E.J. Brill. p. 7. ISBN 978-90-04-10431-0. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
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13. Vigeland, C. (2009). The Mostly Mozart Guide to Mozart. Wiley. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-470-19530-7. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
14. Sadie, S.; Smith, J.E.; Royal Musical Association (1996). Wolfgang Amadeo Mozart: Essays on His Life and His Music. Adelphi Papers No 331 Series. Clarendon Press. p. 500. ISBN 978-0-19-816443-2. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
15. McLamore, A. (2017). Musical Theater: An Appreciation. Taylor & Francis. p. 22. ISBN 978-1-317-19104-9. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
16. Out. Out Pub., Incorporated. 2004. p. 19. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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" ...
17. Croxall, T.H. (1956). Kierkegaard Commentary (in Dutch). Harper. p. 57. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
18. McBrien, W. (1998). Cole Porter: a definitive biography. HarperCollins. p. 48. ISBN 9780002154956. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
19. Hirsch, F. (2002). Kurt Weill on stage: from Berlin to Broadway. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 171. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
20. Savran, David (3 January 2012). ""You've got that thing": Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and the Erotics of the List Song". Theatre Journal. 64 (4): 533–548. doi:10.1353/tj.2012.a494444. ISSN 1086-332X. Archived from the original on 4 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
21. Swayne, S. (2007). How Sondheim Found His Sound. University of Michigan Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-472-03229-7. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
22. ^ Citron, S. (1993). Noel and Cole: The Sophisticates. Great songwriters series. Oxford University Press. p. 283. ISBN 978-0-19-508385-9. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
23. Mynott, J. (2009). Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience. Princeton University Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-691-13539-7. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
24. Mordden, E. (2010). The Guest List: How Manhattan Defined American Sophistication---from the Algonquin Round Table to Truman Capote's Ball. St. Martin's Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-4299-4642-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
25. Redmond, J. (1981). Themes in Drama: Volume 3, Drama, Dance and Music. New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-521-22180-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018. '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 ...
26. Hischak, T.S. (1991). Word crazy: Broadway lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim. PRAEGER FREDERICK A. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-275-93849-9. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
27. Flinn, D.M. (1997). Musical!: A Grand Tour : the Rise, Glory, and Fall of an American Institution. Schirmer Books. p. 389. ISBN 978-0-02-864610-7. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
28. ^ Larkin, C. (1999). The Virgin Encyclopedia of Stage and Film Musicals. Virgin Encyclopedia Series. Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-0375-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
29. ^ Patinkin, S.; Patinkin, P. (2008). "No Legs, No Jokes, No Chance": A History of the American Musical Theater. Northwestern University Press. p. 242. ISBN 978-0-8101-1994-9. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
30. Whitfield, S.J. (2001). In Search of American Jewish Culture. Brandeis series in American Jewish history, culture, and life. University Press of New England. p. 96. ISBN 978-1-58465-171-0. Retrieved 3 August 2018. ... list song like Porter's "You're the Top" (1934) flaunts such superlatives as the Louvre, Botticelli, Keats, and "a Berlin ballad".
31. Corbett, W. (1998). New York Literary Lights: William Corbett. Graywolf Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-55597-272-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018. In his list of things that are "the top" Cole Porter included a "Berlin ballad."
32. Everett, W.A.; Laird, P.R. (2009). The A to Z of the Broadway Musical. The A to Z Guide Series. Scarecrow Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-8108-7044-4. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
33. Magee, J. (2012). Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater. Broadway Legacies. Oxford University Press. pp. 168 ff. ISBN 978-0-19-990894-3. Archived from the original on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
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35. ^ Magee, J. (2012). Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater. Broadway Legacies. Oxford University Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-19-990894-3. Archived from the original on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
36. Magee, J. (2012). Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater. Broadway Legacies. Oxford University Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-19-990894-3. Archived from the original on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
37. Nachman, G. (2016). Showstoppers!: The Surprising Backstage Stories of Broadway's Most Remarkable Songs. Chicago Review Press. p. 145. ISBN 978-1-61373-105-5. Retrieved 3 August 2018. ... In "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," Berlin shifts into full Dogpatch mode, a list song that describes Annie's ignorant but ...
38. Hischak, T.S. (2002). The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-313-31992-1. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 'A' You're Adorable" (1941) is a plucky list song in which an admirer goes through the alphabet finding doting ...
39. Bardsley, G. (2003). Stop the World: The Biography of Anthony Newley. Oberon. p. 76. ISBN 978-1-84002-274-2. Retrieved 3 August 2018. ... 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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50. De Lisle, T. (1995). Lives of the Great Songs. Pavilion. ISBN 9781857930511. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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.
51. University of Kansas (2006). American Studies. University of Kansas. p. 50. Retrieved 3 August 2018. "The Begat" employs what is sometimes referred to as a "laundry list" lyric. ... If sex is the common denominator of "The Begat," another of Finian's songs celebrates another, more peculiarly American leveler: easy credit.
52. ^ Knapp, R. (2006). The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity. Princeton paperbacks. Princeton University Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-691-12613-5. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
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78. De Lisle, T. (1995). Lives of the Great Songs. Pavilion. ISBN 9781857930511. Retrieved 3 August 2018. "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 ...
79. Roach, J.R.; Carlson, M.A. (2009). Changing the Subject: Marvin Carlson and Theatre Studies, 1959–2009. University of Michigan Press. p. 231. ISBN 978-0-472-11707-9. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
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82. ^ Library of Congress (1995). Performing arts: music. Performing Arts Music. Library of Congress. p. 26. ISBN 9780844408224. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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 ...
83. CD Review. WGE Pub. 1992. Archived from the original on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018. "Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3" followed, a list song with an irresistible opening chant ("Why don't you get back in bed! ...
84. Mordden, E. (1999). Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s. Oxford University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-19-535176-7. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
85. Konas, G.P. (1993). From Gershwin to Sondheim: The Pulitzer Prize-winning Musicals. University of California, Davis. p. 73. Retrieved 3 August 2018. 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, ...
86. Magee, J. (2012). Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater. Broadway Legacies. Oxford University Press. p. 436. ISBN 978-0-19-991163-9. Retrieved 1 August 2018.

• List songs
• Lists of songs about a topic
• Song forms