Counting Song

One, two, three, four, five. Once I caught a fish alive.

— Nursery Rhyme

So you want to learn how to count, right? Well, one of the greatest ways of teaching is THROUGH SONG!

The Counting Song is meant to teach its listeners how to count up and down, as well as various number patterns like 10s, 20s, etc. It is usually sung in two different ways, though other variants exist:

• A song that simply counts in order, up or down, patterns included.
• A song that associates a number with the appropriate amount of objects.

Sub-Trope to the Educational Song. Another type of counting song would be The Twelve Spoofs of Christmas. Can sometimes associate with List Song or Alphabet Song.

Not to be confused with Counting Crows songs. See also Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer.

Examples:

Advertising

• Disney's 1992 advertisement gives 20 reasons to visit - each showing a quick scene from Disney world, and done twice within a 30 second ad slot. The pacing of the song squashes scenes 5-10 as the counting is fast in those measures.

Film - Live-Action

• Josie and the Pussycats perform their first song in the film: "Three Small Words." It slips a countdown from six into its refrain: "It took six whole hours / And five long days / For all your lies to come undone. / And those three small words / Came way too late / 'Cause you can't see that I'm the one."
• In the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Freddy's coming is heralded by some ghostly children singing a counting song while jumping rope.
  One, Two, Freddy's coming for you
  Three, Four, Better lock your door

Live-Action TV

• Very darkly parodied by Adam Buxton in his TV show, BUG, with "Counting Song". The video (which was directed by Cyriak) starts off looking like a preschool cartoon, with a little blue man cheerfully talking about how much fun it is to count and all the things there are to count... but then he observes that it becomes less fun as an adult, and the song starts to turn into an increasingly furious rant about counting all of life's miseries while the world around him disintegrates, until he's suddenly crushed under a collapsing wall of building blocks.
• The Doodlebops has "Count to Ten" from the episode "The Bad Day", which shows how to count to ten to calm down when in a bad mood.
• Rainbow: At the end of one episode, Zippy sings a parody of "Ten Green Bottles" about sausages, eating a sausage every time he gets to one "accidentally falling".
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Move Along Home" features a little girl singing, "Allamaraine, count to four, allamaraine, then three more, allamaraine, if you can see, allamaraine, you'll come with me". "Allamaraine" is a term in the game the characters have been transported into, while "if you can see" and "you'll come with me" are clues as to how to pass that level. However, the counting-related lyrics seem to have no meaning.

Music - Artists

• "Back at One" by Brian McKnight.
• "3" by Britney Spears.
• Choo Choo Soul has the song ""One-Two One-Two-Three"", a hip-hop number about learning how to count.
• The song "Inchworm" was performed by Danny Kaye for the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen. It's a simple song about an inchworm measuring marigolds, and tracking their height by powers of two: "Two and two are four / Four and four are eight / Eight and eight are sixteen / Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two."
• "Bodies" by Drowning Pool has a prechorus that repeats the same line with "One! Two! Three! Four!" as punctuation. See here:
  (One!) Nothing wrong with me (Two!) Nothing wrong with me (Three!) Nothing wrong with me (Four!) Nothing wrong with me (One!) Something's got to give (Two!) Something's got to give (Three!) Something's got to give NOOOOOOOW!
• "New Rules" by Dua Lipa is about her list of rules to avoid getting back with her ex. The pre-chorus has her numbering each rule.
• "1-2-3" by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. She counts to eleven through the chorus ("I just want to keep on counting, 'til you're mine"). She once guest starred on Sesame Street to sing a modified version of the song.
• Kate Bush: The Title Track for 50 Words for Snow combines this with a List Song, featuring Bush counting from one to fifty as Stephen Fry lists a different snow-themed word or phrase in accordance with each number.
• Kraftwerk released "Numbers" on their 1981 album Computer World. The lyrics are purely counting up in various languages. German: eines zwei drei vier funf sechs sieben acht, English: one two, French: un deux trois, Spanish: uno due tre quattro, Japanese: ich ni sun shi, and Russian: odin dva tri.
• "Just One Person" by Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady for the musical Snoopy.
• "Ten Duel Commandments" by Lin Manuel Miranda for his musical Hamilton.
• "Ten Crack Commandments" by Notorious B.I.G, which served as inspiration for the above.
• "Ten Little Indians" by Septimus Winner is a Black Comedy minstrel tune that parodies the children's song of the same name, counting backwards from ten to none as a group of Native Americans is whittled down through killing themselves, killing each other, or just going Screw This, I'm Out of Here!. An even more racially charged version of the song would first gain widespread recognition as the original namesake for the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None, in which the trope-naming Ten Little Murder Victims are killed in accordance with the lyrics.
• Songdrops:
  • "Ten Little Penguins" is about ten penguins jumping into some water one by one.
  • "Five Fruit Flies" is about five fruit flies, who disappear one by one.
  • "10 Minutes of Battery Left" is a parody of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", in which the singer counts down the minutes until their phone runs out of charge.
• "Six" by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss for their musical Six.
• "25 Minutes to Go" by Shel Silverstein, performed by Johnny Cash.
• Psychostick's "Numbers (I Can Only Count to Four)" parodies this, being about somebody who can only count to, well, four. The music video even parodies Sesame Street.

Music - Educational

• "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe", a popular children's song about counting two numbers at a time from 1-20 while doing various actions associated with them.
• "Five Little Monkeys": The song features five little monkeys jumping on the bed. The number of the monkeys on the bed go down as each and every one of them fall off.
• "Five Little Ducks" is a Nursery Rhyme about five ducklings who keep disappearing one by one after going out to play. However, once there are no ducks left, their mother quacks louder, and they all return.
• The classic children's song "Ten In the Bed" counts from 10 down to 1. Every time the kids roll over in the common bed, someone falls out, thus decrementing the number of slumberers therein. The sole survivor at the end either feels lonely, or exclaims a smug "Good Night!".
• "Ten Little Indians", a counting out rhyme about using a simple melody ("One little, two little, three little indians...") to count up to ten and back again.
• "Ten Green Bottles": The song is about ten green bottles on a wall and one by one, a bottle falls off which decreases its count by one, until there are no bottles left.
• "This Old Man", a song about a man playing "knick-knack" on various objects numbering from 1-10.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street has a lot of them, usually with thanks to Count von Count:
  • There's of course the "Song of the Count", which doubles as an "I Am" Song as he sings about how he loves counting.
  • The "Birdy Pox Counting Lullaby" from Episode 3434 is the special lullaby the Count sings to help Big Bird take his nap as he counts the various spots of his Polka-Dot Disease all over him. He gets to 20 total before the bird finally dozes off.
  • Episode 1447 starts off with Big Bird wondering where everyone is; this in turn cues the "Big Hello" song which begins with just him singing to welcome the viewer to the street, before he is joined by various other street residents who sing along with him, bringing to a total of 20 all together.
  • A Season 33 episode starts with Maria, Big Bird, and the children singing a Call-and-Response Song about counting to 10 in Spanish.
  • In another Season 33 episode, Big Bird sings and counts the friends he meets (including the viewer) until he reaches a total of ten all together.
  • One song is about counting backwards from ten to zero, sung by Gina to teach her daycare students to count backwards.
  • "Pinball Number Count" is a song about counting to twelve as a pinball machine plays.
  • "Baby, You Can Count on Me" is a song sung by the Count to a baby named Natasha, as he tells her how many of each body part he has.
  • In another song with the Count and Natasha, he tries to teach her to count by pointing out four butterflies, two cats, three birds, and three bats.
  • "12 Little Chicks" is about twelve chicks being sorted into different sized groups (6 + 6, 7 + 5, etc.)
  • The chorus of "Ladybugs' Picnic" counts the twelve ladybugs at the picnic, with the counting sung in groups of three numbers.
  • One song is a parody of Old McDonald, which is counting a woman's farm animals, each species of which she has fifteen (fifteen hens, fifteen pigs, etc.)
  • One song is sung by the "King of Eight", about how there is eight of everything in his kingdom, which he counts... until the Queen's new baby turns out to be a girl, meaning that he now has nine daughters instead of eight.
  • Episode 4180 features the song "Elmo's Ducks". The song starts with Elmo singing "Elmo has four ducks" and the four ducks quacking, but they each move away or get lost in different ways. Elmo sings each verse saying he has one fewer duck, until he has no ducks. Then he hears a "quack" and all four ducks come back.

Toys

• Amazing Amanda dolls will sing the "Toesies Song", to the tune of "Ten Little Indians" ? "One little, two little, three little toesies, four little, five little, six little toesies, seven little, eight little, nine little toesies, ten little toesies on my feet."

Video Games

• Living Books: In the adaptation of Sheila Rae, the Brave, Sheila Rae, while pretending her cherries are bears' eyes, sings a song with lyrics such as "One, two, three, four dead bear eyes."

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner plays this for laughs with wannabe rapper Coach Z. A couple of of his Piss Take Raps are just sort-of-rhythmically counting to 2 or 4. Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People has a snippet in the first episode, "Homestar Ruiner".

Western Animation

• The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!: In an in-between music video segment for Season 3, the Cat sings "Count Your Senses" while teaching Sally and Nick about the five senses and how to count and use them one by one.
• Dora the Explorer: In "La Maestra de Musica", Dora, Boots, and La Maestra sing and count up to 8 and back again while going over Musical Mountain.
• Jay Jay the Jet Plane has "The Counting Game" song from the Season 3 episode of the same name, where Jay Jay, Herky, and Tracy sing about how fun it is to count things. The song initially goes up to 11, but after Tracy successfully finds twelve things that look alike (the red circles in the numbers on Brenda's clock), it returns with a Triumphant Reprise where it goes up to 12.
• Numberblocks:
  • "10 Numberblobs and Me" has the Numberblocks counting to their number along with a different number of objects (from one bun and one sun to ten pens and ten hens).
  • There are many songs about the multiplication tables that list all the numbers up until ten.
• Peg + Cat: "I Do What I Can: the Musical" features a song about how to count to 30 by fives.
• Really Rosie: In the "One Was Johnny" segment, some animals and a robber came into Johnny's house. The song counts to the number 10 up to Johnny trying to figure out how to get rid of his unwanted guests. He threatens the animals and the robber to eat them after he counts backwards to 10. All of them left as the particular number was counted.
• Schoolhouse Rock! has a whole set of songs designed to help listeners memorize a certain multiplication table.
• Team Umizoomi has songs about counting by 5s and 10s.
• Winnie the Pooh had the "123s" Learning Adventures short film which featured two counting songs after another to teach Roo about counting: The first, "Counting", sung by Owl, and the second, "Bouncearific", sung by Tigger.