List of repetitive songs

Many songs have been written that continue until the singer decides (or is forced) to stop. Most of these are traditional, and in modern times considered children's songs. Nonetheless many modern popular songs, in their recorded version, end with a refrain that is repeated ad nauseum until faded away, and in a sense don't strictly end.

There exists a song that has been sung by washerwomen for decades, if not longer. It is not known to what extent this song changes.

The songs in the following list are unbounded. Certain other classes of songs are unboundedly bounded - for example, N Green Bottles can be as long as the singer wishes given that a sufficiently large number is chosen for N. Once the number is chosen, however, the song will end after a fixed period.

List of songs

Repeating songs

• "Bingo"
• "Brother for Sale" by the Olsen Twins
• "Down by the Bay" by Raffi
• "Here We Go"
• "Ivan's in the Garden"
• "Michael Finnigan"
• "Frog Went A-Courting"
• "I Know A Song That'll Get On Your Nerves"
• "The Song That Never Ends"
• "There's a Hole in My Bucket"
• "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt"
• "Found a Peanut"
• "Rabbit Ain't Got No Tail At All"
• "We're Going to Bonnie Doon"
• "We've Got Spirit, Yes We Do"
• "The Diarrhea Song"
• "Stay on the Happy Side"
• "Yon yonson"
• "Row, Row, Row the Boat"
• "The Poem That never Ends"
• "Lloyd George knew my father" (tune: Onward Christian Soldiers)
• "She died she did, she died of a broken rib"

Decrementing songs

These are songs that are strictly speaking bounded, but the bound can be set arbitrarily high.

• "10 Green Bottles"
• "99 Bottles of Beer"

Non-repeating predictable songs

• "One Man went to Mow" (both simple and extended versions)
• "I Like Traffic Lights"
• "I Wish All the Ladies"

Non-repeating unpredictable songs

• Song of the Blue Whales
• Music of the spheres
• "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin
• "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin
• "Hey Jude" by The Beatles
• "Drunkship of Lanterns", "Cicatriz ESP", "Cassandra Gemini" by The Mars Volta
• "In C" by Terry Riley
• "Jesus of Suburbia" and "Homecoming" by Green Day
• "Crimson" and "Crimson II" by Edge of Sanity
• "Catch 33" and "I (EP)" by Meshuggah
• "Light of Day, Day of Darkness by Green Carnation
• "Rocket Man" by Elton John
• "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie
• "Memory of a Free Festival" by David Bowie
• "Do You Feel Like We Do" by "Peter Frampton" Frampton_Comes_Alive

See also

• Perpetuum mobile
• Donald Knuth, "The Complexity of Songs"
• Cumulative song