Standard Snippet / The Cancan Song

Officially, it's the "Infernal Galop" from Act II, Scene 2 of Jacques Offenbach's 1858 operetta Orpheus in the Underworld.

To the rest of the world, it's simply "the cancan song." And it's usually (although not always) a cue for high-kicking Chorus Girls to hit the stage. To that end, it's a quintessential part of the Public Domain Soundtrack and Standard Snippet tropes.

Because of its high-energy, feel-good nature, its use as a trope falls under one of the following conditions:

• Accompanying a performance of the cancan dance itself.
• To underscore a comedic/slapstick action sequence.

This song and/or dance is also used to convey that the scene is set in Paris or the character is in Paris, or France (or, more exactly, the cliché version of it all). The dancers or Chorus Girls are also usually French.

Remember: not all performances of the cancan (dance) are set to the Cancan Song, and not all appearances of the song signal a performance of the dance.

Common Regional Riff for France. See That Russian Squat Dance for another dance used as a regional riff.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The Shop Rite supermarket chain's long-running annual (and more recently, semi-annual) Can Can sale of canned goods, with custom lyrics ("Now, Shop Rite does the cancan/Selling lots of brands of/Everything in/Cans cans!")
• Scottish brewer Irn-Bru set a world record in 2009 by getting 10,000 people to kick up their heels as part of their "Can Clan" campaign. Real cancan dancers were recruited to help out.
• At one point K-Mart used a variant of the "Infernal Galop" to advertise its then-new(ish) Super Kmart hypercenters.
• Dubouchet liqueurs had a commercial sung to "Infernal Galop".

Anime

• Azumanga Daioh: The song is heard in the background during the field day episode.
• Fairy Tail: The song typically plays whenever there's a Bar Brawl.
• In Kill la Kill, this is one of the standard snippets played by Musical Assassin Nonon in her fight against Ryuko.
  • It also plays in episode 16 while Senketsu narrates the world's shortest Recap Episode in less than two minutes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters has a version sung by Tristan and Joey as their "Victory Dance".
  "Can you kick some can, can, tell me who's the man, man!"
• Pretty Cure Dream Stars! plays an instrumental of this during the girls' fight against the giant dog.
• Osomatsu-kun: The 1988 series uses it accompanying chase sequences, most often involving the sextuplets and Iyami.

Film — Animation

• The Little Mermaid (1989): The scene where the Royal Chef Louis is chasing Sebastian the Crab, and comic mayhem ensues. It also complements the Chef's Gay Paree theming.
  • Alan Menken had initially wanted to write a completely original piece of music for the chase, but ultimately decided that the "Infernal Galop" just fit it perfectly. Of course, he tried different variations on it before finally deciding, "I'm trying to reinvent the wheel, here; let's just go with the wheel."
  • It also returns in the sequel, once again as the backdrop to the Chef trying to axe Sebastian, this time in the middle of Melody's birthday party.

Film — Live-Action

• Averted in both the 1952 and 2001 Moulin Rouge films, although Fatboy Slim's thumping version from the latter has become an alternate soundtrack for many dance troupes, and the pitch scene is performed to the same music.
• Also averted in the Frank Sinatra/Shirley MacLaine film of Cole Porter's Can-Can.
• Stardust: The (literally) closeted Captain Shakespeare minces about in his wardrobe while his men on deck engage in an epic sword battle with Septimus's soldiers in time to the beat.
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action: When Elmer Fudd is chasing Bugs and Daffy through the Louvre and they wind up in one of Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings.
• Peter's Friends begins with six college friends performing the Can-Can based "The Underground Song" at a school function before graduation. At the end of the movie, they sing the song together at a reunion, cementing their True Companions status.
• Most of the action in Rush Hour 3 takes place in Paris, so the visuals feature a lot of shots of L'Arc de Triomphe, there are several reprises of Le Marseilles, and when the scene features dancers in a nightclub.
• George of the Jungle: When George beats some mooks.
• Midnight in Paris: When Gil and Adriana watch a nightclub performance of the cancan.
• Easy Virtue has Larita and Hilda perform a can-can routine for a local pageant. Hilarity Ensues when Hilda mistakenly thinks she should be Going Commando to perform the dance.
  "Is it my imagination, or is your daughter dancing without her scanties?"
• Titanic (1997) has the ship's band playing this on deck during the sinking (the band, as is well known, played tunes on deck until nearly the end). Wallace Hartley, the bandleader, refers to it as "Orpheus" as he orders his bandmates to play it, harkening back to its origin as part of the Offenbach opera. An unusual example in that there's nothing cheerful or comedic about the situation they're in.
  Tommy Ryan: Music to drown by. Now I KNOW I'm in first class.

Live-Action TV

• The Benny Hill Show had at least two occurrences — but in these cases, they were "normal" women (e.g. policewomen, hospital nurses) inspired to kick it up when the song commenced. (Ironically, the one time the show included REAL cancan dancers, they performed to Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance.")
• A scene in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: True Ending has this playing when Poppy is getting in the way of Hiiro taking a picture of his supposed daughter winning a footrace.
• The Muppet Show: One episode has Kermit auditioning new acts, including a group of female rats dancing "The Garbage Cancan" to this song.
• So You Think You Can Dance had two very young dancers, a male and female dolled up to look something like Raggedy Ann and Andy, dancing the cancan to this song. It did not go well.
• The last of the hour-long Family Specials of Shining Time Station - "Queen for a Day" - had the Jukebox Band perform a version of "Miss Murphy's Chowder" where Tito Swing is fired from a cannon and looks up to see a cavalcade of puppet cancan dancers in an occurrence of the snippet.

Music

• Long-running English band Bad Manners features a ska-flavored take on The Cancan Song as a part of their set. That's the good news. The bad news is that their (male, bald) singer will often perform the cancan. In drag.
• Classical-music-with-lyrics CD series Beethoven's Wig includes a version. "Oh, can you do the can-can, if you can than I can..."
• Kraut Rock/Space Rock band Can snuck a version onto their eponymous 1979 album (as part of their "Ethnological Forgery" series). Doubles as a Stealth Pun on their name.
• This chiptune version was built out of sounds and samples from Super Mario Bros. And it is hilarious.
  • In a similar vein, this video is made from bits from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
• Acapella group Straight No Chaser's "Christmas Can-Can".
• Steampunk duo Frenchy and the Punk use it at the end of "Yes! I'm French". In concerts, Frenchy calls audience members to form a can-can line in front of the stage.
• Shakespeare Aloud use the Infernal Galop to cram every single title of the Bard's works into just under a minute 'n' a half.
• "Tortoises", the fourth movement of Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals , is the Can-Can. Played reeeaallly slooowllly.
• British dance band Bus Stop remixed it into a techno dance number called "Kick The Can". If you've heard it before, it was most likely from its occasional appearances in some of the early DanceDanceRevolution games.
• Dan Bull's "Busy Buzzy Bees", a song about Minecraft bees, is set to a remix of the Can-Can as the instrumental.
• Tom Chapin’s “Picnic of the World” uses the Infernal Galop for its melody.

Radio

• Frequently used as the tune for "One Song to the Tune of Another" on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Naturally enough, the song chosen will invariably be a tonally inappropriate one — perhaps the best-remembered is Graeme Garden's rendition of "Killing Me Softly With His Song", but other songs used have included "Ain't No Sunshine" (sung by Tim Brooke-Taylor), "Without You" (Tony Hawks) and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (Andy Hamilton) and "Feelings" (Sandi Toksvig).

Theme Parks

• Averted at DisneyLand: their recent revival of the Golden Horseshoe Saloon show used Cole Porter's Can-Can song.

Video Games

• Too many occurrences to mention. See the "Video Games" folder under Public Domain Soundtrack.

Web Original

• This tune has become popular on Tumblr as a soundtrack for videos presenting screenshots of online drama as it progressively unfurls, most notoriously the pandemonium that went down during the 2020 US presidential election ballot count (ft. Castiel suddenly telling Dean he loved him on Supernatural). "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is also used, usually when the drama has built more slowly or begun more innocuously.

Western Animation

• Both in As Told by Ginger. In an episode where Carl and Hoodsey enter Brandon's monkey into a pet talent show, Ginger arrives home to find the monkey wearing a skirt and dancing the can-can.
• Animaniacs:
  • The song "Be Careful What You Eat" is sung by Yakko, Wakko, and Dot to the tune of this song about the ingredients in ice cream.
  • In the episode, "No Pain, No Painting," which is set in France, the Warner Sibs are shown dancing the Cancan dance and dressed in the layered dresses that the Chorus Girls wear.
• In Lautrec, an animated short tribute to the works of Toulouse-Lautrec, the Infernal Gallop is naturally used to accompany the animations of Lautrec's iconic drawings of can-can dancers.
• In the Pinky and the Brain episode "The Really Great Dictator" when Brain teaches Pinky about what it takes to be a good dictator he sings it to the tune of this song, when Pinky hears it he puts on a dress and does the cancan dance.
• Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, which is set in France, uses the Infernal Galop as the melody for the song "All for One and One for All".
  • Another example involving the Classic Disney Shorts characters: Ludwig Von Drake performed a spoof of the Can-Can called "Your Library" on the album "Silly Classical Songs", with the lyrics being about the wonderful things libraries provide. It also appeared on the soundtrack to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse despite not being sung on the show itself.
  • And on the Classic Disney Short "Mickey's Circus", it's used during the climax as Mickey and Donald are on the high wire.
• The Warner Bros. cartoons "Goofy Groceries" and "Lights Fantastic" features scenes of anthropomorphic cans doing the Cancan. "Stage Door Cartoon" has Bugs Bunny hiding from Elmer Fudd on a theater stage among a bevy of Cancan dancers.
• An episode of Yogi's Treasure Hunt has the crew in Paris where a clue to a treasure leads them to "a place in France where the people wear no pants." It takes them to a dance hall where they and even Dick Dastardly are dressed in attire doing the Cancan.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Nasty Patty," Mr. Krabs and SpongeBob briefly break into a celebratory can-can (complete with skirts and a musical accompaniment) when it looks like they're all set to pass the Krusty Krab's health inspection.
• Paddington Goes To School, a spin-off special from Paddington (1975), has Paddington imagining doing the can-can to this music during a lengthly Imagine Spot. (He fears that he has accidentally caused the school assembly to be canceled, and imagines himself having to fill in all the assembly's acts, which include a violin solo, a weight-lifting demo, and a can-can dance.)
  Headmaster (introducing the act): And now, we come to what was to have been the high spot of the afternoon...the girls of the sixth grade performing the can-can. (Someone whispers to him offstage.) ...I beg your pardon?...I...er...I think we may be in for the can't-can't.

Real Life

• The number of amateur and professional dance troupes worldwide who perform the cancan to the Infernal Gallop is literally in the hundreds, if not thousands.

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