"Setting Off" Song

"Into the woods, to get the thing
That makes it worth the journeying..."

— Chorus, Into the Woods, "Prologue"

The characters in the story are all rearing and ready to go! They need something to keep their spirits up, something to heighten the moment: A MUSICAL NUMBER! This is the number that everyone sings when they set off on their adventure. A "let's get ready and go" kind of number. Something jaunty and fun.

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Often crosses over with the "I Want" Song. Compare Wanderlust Song.

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Examples:

Film

• "We're Off to See the Wizard" from The Wizard of Oz is probably the most famous example.
• "City of Light" from The Brave Little Toaster.
• "Adventuring" from The Land Before Time: The Great Longneck Migration.
• "Get Up and Go" from Little Golden Book Land.
• "Gonna Take You There" from The Princess and the Frog.
• "Never Say Never" from An American Tail, which doubles as a Pep-Talk Song.
  • "Way Out West" from Fievel Goes West
• "The Apple Song" from Melody Time.
• "A Girl Worth Fighting For" from Mulan.
• "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee" from Pinocchio.
• "The Virginia Company" and its reprise from Pocahontas.
• "Movin' Right Along" from The Muppet Movie.
• "Sailing For Adventure" from Muppet Treasure Island.
• "Have You Been to Bahia?" from The Three Caballeros.
• The reprise of "When Will My Life Begin?" from Tangled.
• "Tomorrow Is Another Day", by Shelby Flint for The Rescuers.
• "(We're Off on the) Road to Morocco" from Road to Morocco.
  • And the other Road to ... movies. They certainly do get around.
• Non-musical example: "The Submarine" from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, especially when we see the Ulysses finally descend into the ocean.
• "Summer Holiday" in Summer Holiday, which acts more as an unhelpful narrator than this trope, since it'd been established earlier (The song begins with "We're all going on a summer holiday..." yet it appears about ten minutes into the movie after the characters decide to do so).
• "A Whole Bunch Of World" from the film of Teacher's Pet
• Non-musical example: "Rescue" from the live-action 101 Dalmatians (1996). It's such a popular piece from the movie, that Disney re-used it for the VHS trailer of Sleeping Beauty and the theatrical trailer of Doug's 1st Movie
• While not a musical, Recess: School's Out used "Born To Be Wild" playing in the background as T.J. and Becky went to pick the gang up from their camps.
• "All Together Now" from Yellow Submarine.
• "I'm On My Way" by The Proclaimers from Shrek.
• "On My Way" by Phil Collins from Brother Bear
• "On the Trail We Blaze" from The Road to El Dorado.
• "The Song of the Marines" from The Singing Marine, a 1937 Warner Bros. film. But it's more well known from the Looney Tunes short "Conrad the Sailor".
• "Go the Distance" from Hercules starts off as an "I Want" Song before turning into this.
• "Journey to the Past" from Anastasia.
• "On the Open Road" from A Goofy Movie.
• "Second Star to the Right" and "Following the Leader" from Peter Pan.
• The Lord of the Rings has a few
  • "The Road Goes Ever On," which also appears in the book.
  • "A Walking Song," which appears in the book and is adapted as Pippin's song "The Edge of Night" in the movies. An unusual example in that it isn't sung while setting off, though by subject matter it is a setting-off song.
• "We're Off to See the World" from The Chipmunk Adventure.
• "How Far I'll Go" from Moana.
• "Goodbye Song" from Harriet is a rare Real Life example. Enslaved people about to run away from their captors often sang songs to their loved ones as a coded farewell, and the film uses the actual song that Harriet Tubman sang to her family.

Theatre

• "New York, New York" from On the Town.
• "One Foot, Other Foot" from Allegro, sung by the Greek Chorus when Joseph Taylor, Jr. first learns to walk. It symbolizes adventurousness and determination, and becomes his personal motto.
• "I'm On My Way" from Paint Your Wagon introduces the various Forty Niners all bound for Rumson Creek.
• "A Weekend In The Country" from A Little Night Music.
• "Into The Woods" from Into the Woods.
• "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from Hello, Dolly!.
• "There's A Hill Beyond A Hill" from Music in the Air.
• An unproduced musical version of The Man Who Fell to Earth from the Turn of the Millennium had one, "Icarus Descending", as its opening number.
• The title song of Merrily We Roll Along uses the life-as-road-trip metaphor.
• "Addison's Trip (I'm On My Way)" from Road Show.
• "Two By Two" for the missionaries in The Book of Mormon.
• "Strike That, Reverse It", which kicks off the second act of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is a highly comic version of this as Willy Wonka rushes through greeting each of the Golden Ticket finders and having their guardians sign a confusing contract, all so the tour can proceed on schedule. He's in such a hurry to set off that the tune is also a Patter Song.
• "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" from A Very Potter Musical.
• "Godspeed Titanic" from Titanic
• Both 'Climbing Song 1' and 'Climbing Song 2' from The Burnt Part Boys.
• 'Chop To The Top' and 'Hero Is My Middle Name' from The SpongeBob Musical.
• Crossing over with Grief Song, Stay, I Pray You from the broadway adaptation of Anastasia is about setting off, not on an adventure, but as refugees from a Soviet purge.
  "Coachman, hold the horses
  Let me say goodbye,
  Stay, I pray you
  Let me have a moment
  Let me say goodbye
  To bridge and river
  Forest and waterfall
  Orchard, sea, and sky
  Harsh and sweet and bitter to leave it all
  I'll bless my homeland till I die.''

Western Animation

• Wakko's Wish has "The Wishing Star", which is about the Warners leaving town to find the Wishing Star. Of course, their song causes the rest of Acme Falls to learn about the Star, provoking a race to claim the Wish.

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