Angry Mob Song



"''"Raise the flag! Sing the song!

''Here we come, we're fifty strong,

''And fifty Frenchmen can't be wrong.

Let's kill the Beast! Kill the Beast!""

- The Mob, "The Mob Song (Kill The Beast)", Beauty and the Beast

Musical Theatre is Serious Business. There's a lot of drama. And given that it's musical theatre, it's intense drama with a great soundtrack. So logically the angry mob with Torches and Pitchforks get their own Crowd Song about how much they want to Burn the Witch. If there's a public execution about to take place, you'll hear the same mob singing.

La Résistance also commonly get their own song, which falls under this trope since a lot of revolutions in theatre are angry mobs with a political agenda. Expect this to sound like a military march, or at least have a fife and some snaredrums.

Very rarely is an Angry Mob Song not a Crowd Song. It doesn't have to be a Villain Song, but it certainly often is.

=La Résistance=

Music

 * Raise the Black Flag from Food for the Gods

Real Life

 * Real Life French revolutionaries sang "Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira...les aristocrates à la lanterne!"; or, roughly, "string 'em up!"
 * The French national anthem, "La Marseillaise", started out this way too. Its lyrics are really bloodthirsty; it mentions a bloodstained banner on the fourth line, and the chorus (y'know, the part that you repeat and actually remember) urges citizens to form up into battalions and kill their oppressors "until impure blood drenches our fields."
 * In similar vein, the rarely-sung third verse of The Star-Spangled Banner mentions that "their [i.e. the invaders'] blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution." (There's probably a reason it's rarely-sung.)
 * During Red October the Bolsheviks had their own version, called "Worker's Marseillaise".
 * Horst-Wessel-Lied of the National Socialist party of Germany. The Die Fahne hoch became an unofficial Party anthem after the murder of Wessel and after the Nazi coup, an unofficial national song.

Theatre

 * French (wannabe) Revolutionaries once again get their own song in Les Misérables: "Do You Hear the People Sing?"
 * "The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!"
 * "Look at the Sky" (and to a lesser extent, "We're Not Sorry") from Urinetown.
 * Actually, the truest Angry Mob Song song here is "Snuff That Girl." It's a double threat: La Résistance actually gets the Burn the Witch song!
 * "Madame Guillotine" is the theme song of radical Parisian revolutionaries in The Scarlet Pimpernel.
 * In Revoltuion Francaise there are "A Bas Tous Les Privaleges" sung mostly by Danton, and "Retour A La Bastille"

Western Animation

 * "La Résistance" from South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

=Torches and Pitchforks=

Music

 * "Stakes and Torches" from Voltaire's album To the Bottom of the Sea is a mob song about the poor rising up to overthrow their leader, the Robber Baron.
 * Dark folk artist Reverend Glasseye is especially fond of this trope, having more than a few Angry Mob Songs across his three albums. Notable tales include a song about man who incites a crowd to lynch the man courting his daughter ("Mother's a Carpegian") and some religious zealots killing a man who won't provide him wood for their temples ("Black River Falls").
 * The satirical song "The Angry Mob" by the Kaiser Chiefs is about a middle class angry mob getting riled up by things reported in the British press.
 * "Witch Hunt" by Rush is a typical example.

Film

 * "Hang the Bastard" from Cannibal! The Musical, meant to sound as much as possible like a cheery old-school-style excuse-to-dance number.
 * The Dracula puppet musical from Forgetting Sarah Marshall features an angry mob chorus during the final song.

Theatre

 * "March of the Witch Hunters" in Wicked.
 * The Screen to Stage Adaptation of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has "The Townspeople's Lament", which is actually a To the Pain style description of what the angry townspeople wish to do to the titular brothers.
 * "Catch Hatch," a Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number from One Touch of Venus.
 * "Now is gossip put on trial" and "Who holds himself apart" from Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes.
 * The extended climax of The Phantom of the Opera includes a mob pursuing the Phantom in "Track Down This Murderer", a reprise of the title song with significantly different lyrics.
 * "Deep in the Darkest Night" from Dracula. An exception, in that (depending on the production), it may be a crowd song sung by the angry mob, or a solo song that Jonathan Harker sings to the angry mob. A further exception is that, rather than being a dark song about how much the angry mob wants the titular Count dead, its actually a heroic, inspiring song, bordering on Theme Music Power-Up.
 * "Christian Charity Reprise" and "More Blood/Kill the Bat Boy" from Bat Boy: The Musical are sung by the townspeople as they intimidate the town vet into preventing Bat Boy from attending a revival meeting and get riled into a homicidal frenzy, respectively.
 * "Where will you stand when the flood comes?" from Parade, in which the demented evangelist Tom Watson whips up hatred and violence against local Jews (sadly, this is Based on a True Story).
 * The Likes of Us, the little-known first-ever Webber/Rice musical, has two: "Hold a March" and "We'll Get Him". The latter is also reprised. Both are sung by crowds of displeased Londoners who think Thomas Barnardo is an interfering prat.
 * "We're Not Gonna Take It/See Me, Feel Me" from Tommy.
 * Martin Guerre had a "knife dance" in the original version, cut in the rewrites. Also, the part of "Justice Will Be Done/I Will Make You Proud" sung by the villiagers.

Western Animation

 * The aptly named "The Mob Song" of Beauty and the Beast, notable for containing Torches and Pitchforks.
 * They even parodied themselves later!
 * "Savages" in Pocahontas.
 * Which includes the line "They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil!". The Chick was right to be at a loss for words.
 * "We got Pluto!"

=Other=

Music

 * "Burn The Witch" by Queens of the Stone Age. At least until the halfway-point.
 * "The Rise of Abimelech Dumont" by the Gravel Pit features an angry mob trying to overthrow the man who's taken over the town.
 * In The Protomen, an angry mob tries to lynch Dr. Light, on Dr. Wily's behest. Notable in that Light has been found innocent of murder and they still want to kill him.
 * The song in question is titled, quite appropriately, "Give Us the Rope".
 * Somewhat subverted by Black Sabbath's "Iron Man". The song is from the perspective of a rejected hero who turns against the people he once tried to save (but who rejected him).
 * "If You See Light" by The Mountain Goats is an interesting version- it's from the perspective of the person against whom the mob is rallying.

Fan Works

 * "Serves Them Right" from the Calvin at Camp episode "Champion Charlie Brown."

Theatre

 * "The Chase" from Brigadoon. The townspeople aren't intending to kill Harry Beaton, only to prevent him from leaving Brigadoon and condemning the town to vanish forever. Unfortunately, Harry meets Death by Falling Over.
 * The ensemble version of "Tonight" from West Side Story, with each gang anticipating its revenge on the other.
 * This goes back at least as far as the Passion oratorios of the Baroque period.
 * Variation: "Guinevere" from Camelot, "City On Fire" from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and "City Under Seige" from Der Glockner Von Notre Dame are more like choruses about angry mobs than the songs of the mobs themselves.
 * "Down with the Flowers of Progress!" in Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia, Ltd.
 * "Gira la cote" from the opera Turandot, sung by a mob breathlessly anticipating a beheading.
 * "Look down" - the very opening of Les Misérables. Though not so much an Angry Mob Song than a Resigned, bitter Mob song with angry tones about the long, dreading years of prison sentence.

Western Animation

 * "Blame Canada", also from South Park.
 * Which was nominated for an Oscar. And was sung onstage by Robin Williams and a huge chorus of Canadian stereotypes.
 * Because Mary Kay Bergman (Sheila Brofloski) killed herself a few months beforehand. Just so ya know.