show tunes

A show tune is a popular song originally written as part of the score of a “show” (or stage musical), especially if the piece in question has become a “standard,” more or less detached in most people's minds from the original context. Particular musicals that have yielded “show tunes” include:

• Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, The Sound of Music
• Jerome Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat
• Rudolf Friml, Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach and Hammerstein's Rose-Marie
• Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's Pal Joey
• Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, As Thousands Cheer, Call Me Madam
• Cole Porter's Anything Goes, Kiss Me, Kate, Can-Can
• George and Ira Gershwin's Girl Crazy, Oh, Kay!
• Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof
• Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, Gigi, Camelot
• Meredith Willson's The Music Man
• Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
• Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story
• Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd
• Jerry Herman's Milk and Honey, Hello, Dolly!, Mame, Dear World, Mack & Mabel, La Cage aux Folles
• Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music
• John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret, Chicago
• Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
• Stephen Schwartz's Pippin, Godspell, and Wicked
• Jonathan Larson's Rent
• Claude-Michel Schonberg's Les Misérables, Miss Saigon