A special offer for today, I'll tell you what I'll do
For those who sign without delay will get a free tattoo
For it's like money in the bank; come on, join up and I'll be frank
Unless you do, you'll WALK THE PLANK...the choice is up to you
The villain has the hero in his clutches. Escape is impossible. Will he shoot the hero? boil him in oil? throw him into a pit of fire ants with sugar cubes glued to his head?
No, the hero won't get off that easily. This villain is going to
...sing!
That's right—the villain doesn't want to kill the hero. He wants the hero to
join him. Furthermore, he wants the hero to
join him voluntarily, so he bombards the hero with propaganda via musical number.
Generally, this offer will either be rejected outright or result in a temporary
Face Heel Turn unless dealing with a character other than the protagonist or with a tragedy, in which case it might just fully work.
Subtrope of
Villain Song. Related to but not to be confused with
Villain Love Song. Villain Love Songs are...
well, love songs, whereas Villain Recruitment Songs try to persuade the hero to join with the villain simply because it's in their best interests.
Examples
Fanfiction
Film
- "Professional Pirate" — Muppet Treasure Island
- "That's Motivation" — Absolute Beginners. This movie has several characters who qualify as antagonists, but the only one who gets a song is Vendice Partners, an advertising executive who convinces the idealistic photographer protagonist to join him in the business of selling dreams and selling out via a Disney Acid Sequence. This results in the aforementioned temporary Face Heel Turn until the hero learns that Partners and the other antagonists are all in on an evil scheme. David Bowie played Vendice, wrote the song (lyrics here
), and got third billing in the credits — all with good cause.
Live-Action TV
Theater
- "Feed Me (Git It)" — Little Shop Of Horrors
- "Mushnik and Son" could qualify as well, depending on your interpretation.
- "Join Us" — Evil Dead: The Musical
- "Wonderful" in Wicked is the Wizard's attempt to convince Elphaba to abandon her cause and join him. She almost falls for it.
- "When You Had Left Our Pirate Fold" (aka "A Paradox") from Pirates Of Penzance is an example, though Ruth and the Pirate King are not trying to convince Frederick to (re)join them, oh no no no, they're merely pointing out the unusual circumstances and the exact wording of Frederick's apprenticeship (he's bound to the pirates until his twenty-first birthday, and he was born on the 29th of February), and leaving the rest to his "Sense of Duty to which we have never yet appealed in vain".
- "Lovely Ladies" in Les Misérables, where the homeless, despairing Fantine is surrounded by a chorus of prostitutes aggressively telling her to give in to the inevitable and take up their trade.
Web Original
- "Bad Horse" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
- Played with in the reprise, when it becomes more threatening: Bad Horse still says "neigh" to Dr. Horrible's joining the ELE, and now he can only get in by killing someone. "There will be blood, it might be yours."
Western Animation
- "The Elegant Captain Hook" — Peter Pan
- Which actually works, until Wendy persuades the boys otherwise.
- "Welcome to the Forty Thieves" — Aladdin and the King of Thieves, although it's really more of a "you accidentally joined, try to leave and we'll kill you" song.
- There was also the song "Are You In Or Out?" - sung by The Dragon after he assumes control of what's left of the gang once all but half a dozen of them have been driven out. It's not so much a recruitment song as a really aggressive "I'm the wave of the future, so stick with me and we'll all go places" kind of song.
- The Lion King: "Be Prepared". ("YOU WON'T GET A SNIFF WITHOUT ME!")
- From South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, "Blame Canada" could count, though the Mothers Against Canada were more Well Intentioned Extremists than outright villains, although Sheila almost crossed the line before her Heel Face Turn at the very end. (They accidentally release the Big Bad, Saddam Hussein, by bringing enough intolerance into the world to open the portal to Hell.)
