A character sings to themselves while something distressing or traumatizing is happening to them, in an attempt to calm themselves.
Thing is, music does help people relax and may help them manage pain better. Thus it's understandable why someone would do this.
The song is usually something comforting to the character. They could attach it to a good memory, (especially one from their childhood). It could also be a song that their mother or caretaker used to sing to them when they were little, also in an attempt to calm them down or make them go to sleep.
They might sing this song in a Troubled Fetal Position and/or while rocking back and forth.
The song in question may be a well-known one, particularly if it is in the Public Domain.
Could be a Bravado Song. May overlap with Ironic Nursery Tune. Compare Melancholy Musical Number and Songs of Solace.
Examples:
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Films — Animated
- An American Tail: "Somewhere Out There", which Tanya and Fievel sing separately but as a duet, with her still believing her little brother is alive somewhere, and him knowing his family is out there and he needs to find them.
- Dory in Finding Nemo has "Just keep swimming!"
- Frozen II: Anna sings "The Next Right Thing" to help herself overcome the depression caused by Elsa's apparent death. Notably, this is not a happy song but rather one of grim resolve.
- Shrek the Third: Prince Charming is interrogating Shrek's friends about Shrek and Fiona's whereabouts, so he has Captain Hook threaten Gingy with his hook hand. Gingy is frightened by him, and as his life flashes before his eyes, he sings "On the Good Ship Lollipop" to keep himself calm.
Films — Live-Action
- The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother As assailants close in on the carriage containing the protagonists, Jenny starts singing loudly and repetitively while Orville then begins listing off all the sightseeing locations in London alphabetically.
- Cinderella (2015): Ella sings "Lavender's Blue" to herself, the song her parents used to sing to her, after coming to terms with giving up her chance to be with Kit in order to protect him from her stepmother. This ends up being what secures her happy ending, since her mouse friends open the window so Kit, on the ground below, hears her singing and knows she is in the attic.
- Incendies: When she was imprisoned, Nawal sang to silence the sounds of the other inmates being tortured. For this, she received the nickname "the Singing Woman".
- Monty Python's Life of Brian (in)famously ends with a choir of convicts, led by Eric Idle, singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" while being crucified.
- My Girl: Whenever Vada is stressed or dealing with trauma (like when she's locked in the basement and when Thomas J has been killed), she covers her ears and quickly sings "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" to herself.
- Titanic (1997): After Jack dies, Rose sings the beginning of "Come Josephine".
Rose: Come Josephine, in my flying machine. Going up, she goes. Up, she goes.
- War of the Worlds (2005): Rachel sings "Hushabye Mountain" while covering her ears to keep herself calm when her father is forced to kill the unhinged, ranting Ogilvy to stop him from alerting the Martian Tripods to their presence.
Literature
- In The Lord of the Rings, Sam Gamgee in the Tower of Cirth Ungol is sitting in the dark, despairing because he cannot find Mr. Frodo. He mummers various old songs and rhymes as they come to his mind, and then he begins to sing a new song aloud: In western lands beneath the Sun...
Live-Action TV
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Level 2 of the Santiago Panic Scale, Amy Santiago's methods of coping with stress, is creepily singing songs from The Great American Songbook. A Cutaway Gag shows Amy singing "You're a Grand Old Flag" in the middle of the night while studying for her sergeant's exam.
- Community: Troy starts singing the theme song of Reading Rainbow in a washroom stall and breaking down crying trying to calm himself down after meeting Levar Burton when he only just wanted an autographed photo of him and to never meet him in person.
- In the Farscape episode "Liars, Guns and Money: Part 1", John Crichton finds himself on the brink of a total breakdown as Harvey begins exerting more control over him. However, he is eventually able to reinforce his self-control by loudly singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" until he's able to get away from the clone's objective. For good measure, he's also using this to drown out the demands of the real Scorpius.
- In The Goodies, Tim Brooke-Taylor's response to trauma or to imminent disaster is to dance around the room singing the Teapot Song.
- The John Larroquette Show: Gene, the janitor for the bus station, sings The Minstrel Boy while holding an abandoned baby that is having to be turned over to Child Services, both to quiet the child and to come to terms that he has to part ways with the child, whom he had become attached to.
- Preacher (2016): When she's trapped and thinks she's about to die, Featherstone tends to start singing Onward, Christian Soldier to herself.
- In the Starsky & Hutch episode "Lady Blue", a woman's mind is destroyed by a "narco-hallucinogenic highball." She's reduced to singing "I know where my head is at, won't somebody find my body?" over and over again.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Wounded", Capt. Ben Maxwell is reminiscing about the war with the Cardassians with Chief O'Brien, and recalls a young man who was killed during the war, who went by the nickname of "Stompy", and the song he used to sing. As Maxwell is preparing to surrender to Picard, he and O'Brien begin to sing that same song, The Minstrel Boy.
- Supernatural: In "Phantom Traveler", Dean hums Metallica to deal with his fear of flight.
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy reveals that whenever she got mad in the bunker, she would go to her happy place and imagine herself singing a song in order to ignore her own emotions due to the trauma she was experiencing.
Puppet Shows
- Fraggle Rock: In "The Day the Music Died", Gobo is the last Fraggle awake, as the Ditzies, who give light to the subterranean areas where Fraggles live, are dying off. Gobo had been tasked with writing the Glory Song for a celebration but had been struggling with finding words or a melody. Now in the dark, he begins to sing to comfort himself, feeling himself, without the Ditzies' light, starting to slip away into a Forced Sleep with the rest of the Fraggles. Just as he begins to tentatively sing "Shine On, Shine on Me", beautiful sparks of light — the Ditzies — start to appear. He realizes that the Ditzies come from music, and he renews his efforts with more vigor. The other Fraggles start to wake up, joining in the song, until all of Fraggle Rock is restored. The other Fraggles hail Gobo as a hero, and the Storyteller exclaims that Gobo's just written the Glory Song.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: In the episode Red Zone Cuba, Mike and the bots are in such pain from this week's movie that they fear they'll never be able to feel joy again. In an attempt to cheer themselves up, they sing "a bouncy, upbeat song"
, with inane lyrics about household goods and office supplies.
- In a Sesame Street sketch with Ernie and Bert in an Egyptian pyramid, Bert suggests that Ernie overcome his fear by singing. Ernie starts to sing "Rubber Duckie", and his statue doppelgänger joins in the song.
Theatre
- Falsettos:
- In "A Day in Falsettoland", Mendel assures himself at least he has Trina while dealing with annoying patients. Trina, stressed about her son's bar mitzvah and Marvin getting back together with Whizzer, is assured by Mendel that, "Everything will be all right", which she then repeats to herself throughout the song.
- In "Holding to the Ground", Trina tries to keep her head up while she struggles with the shifting notions of what she expected her life to be and the hospitalization of her ex-husband's boyfriend from AIDS. This includes a Dark Reprise of the "Everything will be all right" lyrics from "A Day in Falsettoland".
- Ophelia in Hamlet sings a song about a young woman losing her virginity, then being rejected, as she hands out Double Entendre flowers to everyone.
- The King and I: "I Whistle a Happy Tune" doubles as a Bravado Song, as Anna sings about how she whistles a happy tune to get herself through her fears, before encouraging her son to do the same.
Web Videos
- Dimension 20: early episodes of the Fantasy High campaign show Gorgug Thistlespring, a half-orc barbarian adopted by gnomes, as singing a song in an attempt to prevent himself from going into a barbarian rage. It never works.
- In the Real-Time Fandub of Resident Evil 2 (Remake), when Sherry is hiding from Chief Irons as she tries to escape him, she sings "Everything is Awesome" to try and drown out an Ironic Nursery Tune he's singing as he searches for her.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: In "The One That Got Away", Sidney Huffman has his life ruined by Roger (unaware that Sidney's a Split Personality of his), and he's soon reduced to sobbing on the floor while singing "The Lord is Good to Me".
- Family Guy: During Brian's Mushroom Samba in "Seahorse Seashell Party", he finds Peter being roasted alive over a fire rotisserie style by demons while singing "Wheels on the Bus".
- Justice League: In "Only a Dream", Batman hums a jingle which uses the tune to "Freres Jaques" to keep John Dee out of his head and keep himself calm and awake.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Sleepless in Ponyville", after Scootaloo wakes up from her nightmare about the Olden Pony, she spends the rest of the night quietly humming to herself so she doesn't fall asleep again.
- Recess: In "The Box", T.J. is forced to spend time in a "box" drawn on the blacktop. By the end of his sentence, he's in a Troubled Fetal Position while singing "This Old Man".
- South Park: An example of this trope occurs in "Spookyfish", in which Stan's mother tells herself that Stan is such a good boy when she's covering up the murders that she mistakenly believes he committed. But in some scenes she also sings a song — a corrupted version of "Hush Little Baby" that goes "Hush little baby, don't say a word. Momma's gonna buy you a mockin' bird. If that mockin' bird don't sing, Momma's gonna bury it in the backyard."
- Steven Universe:
- In "Jail Break", an imprisoned Sapphire seems to be doing this at first, singing her and Ruby's romantic leitmotif after they are separated for the first time in years. However, it's also implied she knows Ruby will escape, and is singing to help Ruby find her.
- In "Mindful Education", Garnet teaches Stevonnie, after Connie's guilt over hurting a boy at school causes their fusion to fall apart, the song "Here Comes a Thought" to help them be mindful of their negative thoughts and let them go. After Garnet sings this, showing how she's used it in the past for herself, Stevonnie repeats the verse to themself.note
- Wayside: Todd, while suffering Sanity Slippage from being the kindergartners' king, sings "Patty Cake" in a Troubled Fetal Position by the time Myron finds him.
