Stock pose for sultry songbirds of every type, from cabaret crooners to navy nightingales. In essence, the singer sits on or leans heavily against a piano, posturing suggestively. If the piano is big enough, she'll often actually lie on top of it.
Compare Ready for Lovemaking, which this is no doubt meant to invoke. There's often some playful teasing going on with The Piano Player— and of course, the audience.
Do not expect her to be paired with a Lounge Lizard, unless he's actually a competent pianist. Compare Elegant Classical Musician, when the attractive person is playing the piano.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Lucky Luke: Saloon singers tend to do this.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): In "All in Moderation", as part of the Prohibition pastiche, the underground sugar bar set up in the Apples' barn includes Fluttershy singing while lounging on Spike's piano in a dress.
Comic Strips
- 9 Chickweed Lane: Edda and several other female characters can play the piano like this.
- Peanuts: In a way, Lucy Van Pelt leaning on Schroeder's piano, though she usually doesn't sing.
Films — Animation
- Cats Don't Dance: Parodied and exaggerated when the sickeningly sweet child actress Darla Dimple does this on a piano sized for her enormous butler Max. You get the impression she could roll around for several hours and never be in danger of falling off.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Laverne the old lady gargoyle puts on a feather boa and poses on a piano during their Disney Acid Sequence.
- Shrek 2: The Fairy Godmother does this when she's singing "Holding Out For A Hero".
Films — Live-Action
- Being John Malkovich: When John Malkovich enters the portal into his mind, he ends up in a restaurant where everyone has his face and can only say his last name. Among them is a lounge singer on the piano singing, well, you know...
- Chicago: Roxie Hart during her imaginary first performance ("My Funny Honey") rides this pony for all it's worth.
- Down with Love: Barbara Novack does this during the song that plays over the closing credits.
- In The Fabulous Baker Boys, Michelle Pfeiffer frequently does this; it's even the page image!
- Hot Shots!: Parodied when the singer lies at a physically impossible angle on the open lid of a grand piano and (in the process of wiggling seductively) manages to shimmy right off.
- Jesus Christ Superstar: In the 2000 version, Herod, of all people, does it during Herod's Song.
- Johnny Dangerously: Johnny's girlfriend Lil Sheridan does this while singing in a nightclub.
- Lemonade Joe has a rare gender-flipped example when Doug Badman half-lies on the piano in his saloon when he tries to persuade The Chanteuse Tornado Lou to leave with him for Europe.
- Little Miss Marker: Bangles the sexy nightclub singer does this as part of her act. So it comes off as a little weird later in the film, when six-year-old Marthy (Temple) decides to imitate Bangles by hopping on a piano and singing a song.
- In The Racket, Helen, The Chanteuse, sits atop a piano to sing a song. It's an upright, but she still works it.
- A Deleted Scene for Scooby-Doo (2002) has Velma getting "drunk" and singing "Too Good To Be True" while laying on top of a piano.
- Tuff Turf: At the country club, Morgan asks Frankie if she can sing. She says no, so he tells her to sit on the piano and look pretty while he sings a romantic ballad.
Live-Action TV
- The Benny Hill Show: Benny would frequently play a singer who has trouble hopping up onto the piano.
- Black Books: Parodied when Fran tries to use this to seduce someone, but accidentally hits a handful of keys as she sits down.
- The Chamber Quintette has a skit parodying this, with Keren Mor singing Bab el-Wad, a memorial song for dead soldiers, as a sexy cabaret girl.
- In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend "Tell Me I'm Okay" features Rebecca doing this while the delivery driver she's serenading plays, then she plays while the driver sits on the piano looking confused, then both of them are on the piano while the delivery package plays.
- Doctor Who: In "The Lie of the Land", Missy does this while discussing with the Doctor how to defeat the Monster of the Week. Which doesn't seem sexy in itself, but given the preference by Time Lords for platonic rather than sexual relationships, the scene has a definite Foe Romance Subtext.
- The Golden Girls: Blanche does this in "Journey to the Center of Attention", complete with a red dress. Of course, it fails horribly; watch to see just how.
Rue McClanahan named this as her favorite musical scene.
- The Office (US): Jan does this for her scene in Michael's movie, "Threat Level Midnight".
- Parker Lewis Can't Lose: In an Imagine Spot, Miss Musso is seen doing this.
- Saturday Night Live parodied this trope thrice:
- The LeBron James/Kanye West episode (the first episode of season 33) had the Digital Short, "Iran So Far," which featured Fred Armisen as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a red dress on top of a piano.
- On the Sigourney Weaver/The Ting Tings episode (from season 35), Weaver plays a lounge singer who invokes this trope, but ends up yelling at the piano player (played by Bobby Moynihan) when she starts freaking out about how high up she is. The piano player thinks she's kidding, until she ends up falling 60 feet and the piano player immediately notices.
- When Martin Short hosted the last episode of 2012, he attempted this trope during a Bawdy Song about Christmas. "How does a man sit on a piano?"
- Short Ribbs: In one episode, Patty Maloney does it during her song.
- In Spicks and Specks (an Australian Comedy Musical Quiz show) host Adam Hills does this while being serenaded by comedian Tim Minchin.
- In Victorious, Tori does this during the song "Tell Me That You Love Me".
- Whose Line Is It Anyway?: In one episode, Wayne Brady does this during a playing of Greatest Hits while singing in the style of Eartha Kitt. Here's the clip.
- Will & Grace: In one episode, Karen makes Will do this while singing a Torch Song in order to persuade her to become a client of his firm. He gets about halfway through the song before quitting out of sheer embarrassment.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine puts a hologram of Major Kira into this role, complete with a wonderful red dress, since it would be massively out of character for the real Kira.
- Invoked by Connie Chung, of all people, in the bizarre gown-and-sequins Torch Song finale to her short-lived talk show Weekends with Maury and Connie. The internet watched in horrified fascination.
Music
- Brandish: The cover art◊ for the Piano Collection shows Dela lying prone on a piano, while facing the viewer and showing a considerable amount of cleavage.
- "Edge of Paradise": A promotional picture has the lead singer lie on top of a white grand piano here◊.
Theater
- Chicago: The script calls for Roxie to do this during "Funny Honey", citing Helen Morgan as the example to follow.
- This was Helen Morgan's routine in the 1920s; she performed "Bill" this way (for a rather dissipated version of "sexy") in the original production of Show Boat (but not the 1936 film version).
- Face The Music: Referenced in "Torch Song":
I longed to sit upon a piano or an organ
Pouring out my heart, the same as Helen Morgan.
Video Games
- In Contrast, Kat does this during her performance.
- League of Legends: The splash art for Secret Agent Miss Fortune shows her doing this — surrounded by slaughtered clubgoers.
- Undertale: While making friends with her, Undyne tells you about the time Alphys' friend (implicitly Mettaton) came over to lie on her piano while feeding himself grapes. Made funnier since he was still in his normal rectangular form, with no mouth.
Undyne: I don't like that guy, but I admire his lifestyle.
Webcomics
- Bug Martini claims that a downside to owning a piano is that one is always having to shoo sultry lounge singers off it before their sequins scratch the varnish.
Western Animation
- Animaniacs: Dot Warner occasionally does this. One notable instance was in the short "Roll Over, Beethoven".
- Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn does this in "Harlequinade". She then manages to fall off the piano, causing Batman to Head Desk.
- Chip 'n Dale: Clarice, a chipmunk lounge singer, does this in Two Chips and a Miss.
- Doug's girlfriend Patti Mayonnaise in one of his fantasy sequences.
- Drawn Together: Ling-Ling does this for his musical number in the musical series finale.
- Family Guy: Lois does this after Peter remodels their basement into a club.
- The Simpsons, "The Fabulous Fake Boy": Bart has a huge crush on his piano teacher Zhenya. He imagines himself playing the piano while Zhenya is a seductive chanteuse who is dressed in a tight-fitting red dress. She's seen in various poses — either sitting or lying — on their piano.
- Total Drama: In Total Drama World Tour, Bridgette does this in the beginning of her musical number, "I'm Sorry".
Real Life
- Lauren Bacall struck a relatively innocent version of this pose in a famous photo◊ with then-Vice President Harry Truman at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in February 1945. Truman still got in trouble with his wife.
- Yoshiki Hayashi, when he's not actually playing the piano, will sometimes do this.
