List song
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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 humorous or 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.
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Patter songs
Many patter songs fall into this genre such as:
- KoKo's 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)
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "List song" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
