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Duncan: You said one song per episode!
Chris: Yeah, but this is a reprise! Not a new song!
Total Drama World Tour, 'Walk Like An Egyptian Part One'

A character performs a musical number; a little bit later, another character tries to do the same thing, but is informed, "We've already done that song."

A subtrope of Musicalis Interruptus, and related to Musical Number Annoyance.


Examples:

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     Live Action TV 

  • In an episode of The Mighty Boosh, Howard tries to cheer Vince up by performing a song whose message is that "It's what's inside that counts." A few minutes later, Naboo the Enigma and Bollo start to sing the same song, but Howard tells them, "We've already done that one."
  • Jeeves and Wooster:
    • In an episode (and no doubt in the original story), Jeeves manages to scuttle Tuppy Glossop's budding relationship with an opera singer by having her sing "Sonny Boy" in a talent show the haves are putting on for the have-nots — the trick being he already got other people to sing it earlier (without Tuppy's knowledge). When she sang she got roundly booed.
    • It was at least four times. The plot was to have Bertie perform it before Tuppy, so Tuppy would be booed and the singer would be unimpressed. It had been performed multiple times before Bertie did so, unfortunately the opera singer was running late and didn't see Tuppy's humiliation. Then to put the plan back on track, Jeeves "passed on a request" from Tuppy that his opera singer love should sing it when she arrived. The audience threw cabbages and she got mad.
  • X-Play: The Musical ends this way, with Adam and Morgan's video game beginning a Dark Reprise of "Love Me" only to be Killed Mid-Sentence with a sledgehammer.

    Film-Animated 
  • In Ice Age: The Meltdown, the vultures sing a cover of "Food, Glorious Food". Immediately after the number ends, Sid starts singing it to himself aloud, and is quickly shut down by his friends. Considering "Food, Glorious Food" was the vultures' way of trying to lead the heroes to their deaths so they could become their next dinner, it's understandable.
  • In Steven Universe: The Movie, after Bismuth and Steven finish "Who We Are", Spinel continue's Steven Dark Reprise of "Happily Ever After", but in absurdly hammy and inappropriately cheerful tone.
    Steven: Whoa, Spinel, it's okay. We're done.

    Film-Live Action 

  • A Mighty Wind:
    • As the Folksmen realize that the New Main Street Singers are singing a cover of the song with which they [the Folksmen] intended to open. One of them angrily suggests that they go ahead do the song anyway, figuring the audience will like their version better because TNMSS' rendition is so unbelievably cheesy.
    • This happens almost the same way in Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas; as the titular band readies themselves for a talent competition, they hear an entry going before them singing the song they were planning to use. It seems they have only two choices: drop out, or sing it anyway and risk being thought of as copycats. Instead, they hurriedly think up and write a new song to perform on stage.
  • In the film version of Little Shop of Horrors, Seymour and Audrey are about to go into a reprise of "Suddenly Seymour" right before the climax of the film when a Traveling Salesman cuts them off. "If you two lovebirds would stop singing for just one minute..."
  • Played with in The Muppets (2011) when the opening song is reprised at the end. The villain angrily says, "Will you people stop singing? You've already done this song!" Except he says this as part of the song itself. And the singers ignore him and go on with the song anyway.

    Music 
  • In Stan Freberg's Lawrence Welk parody "Wun'erful, Wun'erful," after the applause for the Lemmon Sisters' rendition of "Thank You for All Those Cards and Letters, You Folks Out There in Television Land Lant," the next singer, "that man with the deep, deep voice, Larry Looper," offers to perform the same song. Welk (or Freberg's impersonation of him) objects, "I'm sorry, that number has been taken."
  • The opening section of the finale of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, after two hectic outbursts, proceeds to a lengthy instrumental recitative, with snippets from the three earlier movements which every time are inconclusively cut off. Though the meaning of these interruptions cannot be precisely explained, after a four bar passage not borrowed from a previous movement but hinting at the real theme of the finale, the instrumental recitative proceeds quickly to a triumphant cadence, followed by an extensive development of the theme. Between this development and the actual singing of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" to this theme, the music returns to the hectic outburst that opened the movement, and a shorter version of the recitative, this time actually sung, with words which may be taken as explanation for the earlier interruptions:
    "O friends, not these sounds! Instead let us begin to sing more agreeably and more joyfully."

    Theatre 
  • In the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes, Moonface Martin sings "Be Like the Bluebird" in an attempt to cheer up Billy after they're left to rot in the brig. When two more characters are thrown in with them, he starts to sing the same song, to which Billy responds "Would you forget about that?!"
  • Curtains gives us this when Nikki shows up with the murderer's gun:
    Bambi: She did it!
    The rest of the cast and crew: She did it, she did it, she did it, she did it, that Nikki is tricky and slick-
    Cioffi: [interrupting] STOP IT!

    Western Animation 
  • In the Futurama episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back," Hermes Conrad has a song starting "When I was four there was a hurricane in Kingston town". At the very end of the credits for that episode, Zoidberg can be heard starting "When I was two there was a tidal wave in" before abruptly being cut off.
  • In an Hercules: The Animated Series episode, just as Pain prepares to go again into the song about the cursed stone they carved a mask out of, Panic slaps him to stop, because it would reveal their plan.
  • Luna of Let's Go Luna! has a short song about her that Andy, Carmen, and Leo sing Once per Episode whenever they first encounter her. The episode "The Big Dig" has the gang meet Dr. Rana, who tries to sing the song only to be interrupted by Luna pointing out the kids have sung it already.
  • This happens across episodes in Littlest Pet Shop (2012). The episode "Sunil's Sick Day" contains the song "Cyril McFlip," about Russell's detective persona. In the episode "Secret Cupet," Russell dons the Cyril McFlip persona again; his friends attempt to sing another version of it, but Russell stops them one line into the song.
  • Steven Universe:
    • After Peridot insults Rose Quartz in the episode "It Could've Been Great", Steven tries to dispel the palpable tension by reprising "Peace and Love on the Planet Earth", but Garnet isn't having it.
    • Spinel gets shut down by Steven when she tries to reprise "Change" in the episode "Homeworld Bound" of Steven Universe: Future.
  • Wander over Yonder features this in the musical episode entitled "My Fair Hatey." Having finally thrown the Frostonium into the core of Lord Dominator's ship, Commander Peepers tries to launch into a reprise of "How I'll Get Her." Sylvia informs him that they don't have time because the ship is about to explode.

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