As in: This is a catchy number by the Beatles.
What’s up with that?
In old vaudeville acts, the acts were numbered in the bill
I. Some catchy song
II. You’ve heard this before
III. This one’s okay
IV. Boooooring
To “do a number” was to do an act from the numbered section in the bill, then it got predictably extended to other music.
Edit: cite It’s from 1885-ish
SEE! SEE! this is why I love the SD. I didn’t ever wonder about that and NOW I know!!!
Isn’t that seriously cool?
Thanks for that. Ignorance averted and I just had to read!
It predates vaudeville, first being used for arias, etc in opera.
This sense harks back to an older sense.
As you can see it has nothing at all to do with the numerical order on a vaudeville bill.
All cites and definitions from Online OED.
Fair enough, I got my info from etymonline which has a pretty good reputation, but the OED has cites of previous usage so it wins.
I just figured it got boring introducing every song with “Here’s a song by…” or “This song’s by…” and the word “number” is just a bit of a change up.
Add to the previous reasons the possibility that there are others (besides myself) who cling to the notion that “song” requires “singing” and that “tune” suggests some sort of melody. A “number” avoids either trap and might include soft shoe, backflips and fooling around with a puppet.
“Number” is also a good catchall similar to do-hickey, thingamajig and other assorted “whatsit” utterances.
There can be more than one reason for a term being in use. That is, an older cite wins as first usage, but doesn’t necessarily explain current popularity.
Yes, as Michael Flanders of Flanders & Swann put it:
(From the intro to ‘Excelsior’ on “And Then we Wrote”.)
Also a fan of the word “diddy” (or is it ditty?) as a subsitute for a song, a piece, a number, etc.
When I was a kid (circa 1970), we attended a small church in rural Texas. We didn’t have printed bulletins. There was a board up front with removable 6" numbers, and every week they’d put up three sets of numbers, like:
154
302
287
And we’d all know that the first hymn we’d sing was number 154 in the hymnal, and then later we’d be singing hymn number 302, and finish up with hymn number 287. AFAIK, these exact same hymnals were used by thousands of other Baptist churches all over the south.
I’m not claiming this is the origin of the term but it illustrates the usefulness of it.
Yeah, I can hear the pastor saying, “And for our next number …” 