Show tune

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
• Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's Pal Joey (musical)
• 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's West Side Story (with Stephen Sondheim as lyricist)
• 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
• 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

Though show tunes vary in style, they do tend to share common characteristics—they usually fit the context of a story being told in the original musical, they are useful in enhancing and heightening choice moments.

Until the late sixties, show tunes dominated popular music: most of the hits of such songwriters as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin came from their shows.