Ask HN: Why do animated shows tend to have so many musical numbers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do animated shows tend to have so many musical numbers?

I'm a big fan of shows like Bob's Burgers, the early years of the Simpsons, etc. and I've been rewatching Bob's Burgers in preparation of seeing the movie and noticed that there are a ton of musical numbers. It seems something that happens genre-wide but I don't see it in other tv categories. Any idea why it's so prevalent in animated shows like those?

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I noticed this too, and I have a couple theories about it. Since the actors only contribute a voice performance, including a musical number might be easier to do in animation than in live-action. There's no on-screen talent that has to learn choreography or whatever, no difference between drawing the show's usual sets and whatever outlandish one the musical requires, and so musical numbers already fit the production of animated tv. The other thing I notice is that a musical number allows a single premise to be mined for multiple jokes and the dialog passes more slowly as its sung. I've wondered if writers sometimes run out of ideas and think it would be easier to write a couple verses of parody lyrics rather than new jokes.

Tracy Ulman is the closest I can think of non-animated characters doing music parodies on a regular basis. But she usually made gaffe rock videos, which is related, but not what you're asking about.

Golden Girls did a few musical numbers, but that was a really long time ago. I can't think of any modern-day sitcom that could pull off musical parodies without coming across as being very strange. Yet it totally works for animations somehow.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, with Feeling is a classic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_More,_with_Feeling_(Buffy...

Later escalated to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Horrible's_Sing-Along_Blog

When it comes to movies it used to be common for movies to have musical numbers in them, but that went out of style except for animated films.

Variety shows based around music performances, comedy performances and other things that fit in the frame of a ‘show-inside-a-show’ were dominant in the 1950s but have faded away except for shows like America’s Got Talent.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MusicalEpisode

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