Talk:Music! Music! Music!

Citation needed? It is common knowledge in this music field. Original research? You can hear it yourself in the song.

With the new format player, why have the descriptions of each version been dropped? 216.95.55.230 20:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC) I have put descriptions back. 216.95.55.230 20:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Song's use of "nickelodeon"
Can anyone address the use of the term "nickelodeon" in this song? From film history class, I learned that a nickelodeon was a small movie theatre that showed one-reel silent films for 5 cents per patron, but in the lyric to this song, the term is used seemingly to refer to a jukebox. I've never heard the term "nickelodeon" used in reference to a jukebox anywhere else. Is this terminology that was commonly used in the 1940s or 1950s? Or did the songwriters just make this up for the sake of a rhyme? Davidgra (talk) 18:37, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * This very song is apparently the source of all the subsequent confusion about what a nickelodeon is. If there are any even halfway respectable pre-1949 sources that apply the word to jukeboxes or player pianos or anything other than an early five-cent movie theater, I have yet to encounter them. After 1949, confusion and the propagation of error have reigned. Even some histories of film will tell you that Mutoscopes, or Kinetoscopes, or the penny arcades in which such machines were found, were known as nickelodeons. No, they were not. My pet theory is that the lyricist of this song had an orchestrion in mind, relied on decades-old childhood memories, and simply misremembered the name of the contraption. But then again, maybe "...in the nickelodeon" simply sounded better than "...in the old orchestrion", and who will care? AVarchaeologist (talk) 00:34, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

It would be good if a source could be found for that (maybe that AVarcaeologist publicizes something about this that can be referred to). Now I think it's hard to justify why Wikipedia should say something else than "some histories of film". (I've added citation-needed to that part of the article.) Pst (talk) 10:53, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

In Alexander Salton's novel The Great Midland from 1948 there is maybe the quote “Other girls she had known in junior high school spent their Saturday mornings in Balknis’ candy store, where they whispered and giggled with the boys who hung around the soda fountain. They smoked cigarettes and looked through the spicy story magazines, and always somebody was putting nickels in the nickelodeon so that it kept playing ‘My Blue Heaven’ and ‘Dream Train.’”. I'm saying maybe, because I'm quoting a later edition (available with Google Books), so that's something someone with access to the first edition could check. If this was there in 1948 this didn't start in 1949, and if it was because of a confusion it was already present. Pst (talk) 11:20, 16 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The bad presumption here is that everything that can be known can be found on the internet today. You don't know. George Slivinsky (talk) 11:01, 17 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The author's name is Alexander Saxton, not Salton, but the reported year of publication is apparently correct. Among other things, Saxton was a commu ... I mean columnist for the Daily Worker. So perhaps songwriters Stephen Weiss and Bernie Baum read Saxton's pinko scribblings hot off the press in 1948-9 and promptly incorporated the subversive error into their lyric? Typical insidious commie propaganda technique, if you ask me—leading our nation's youth into error by way of a seemingly innocuous popular song. But evidently they are to blame only for disseminating the misnomer, not for its first appearance. In any case, an example of a clueless later generation misapplying a pop-cultural term current thirty-odd years earlier and making a muck of it, and still an absolute error. 66.81.241.118 (talk) 11:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

The article currently claims "There is no known instance of "Nickelodeon" being used - as in the song - to imply a jukebox-like device, prior to Alexander Saxton's 1948 novel The Great Midland". That is not correct. The novel "They Don't Dance Much" by James Ross uses the term "nickelodeon" to mean "jukebox". It was first published in 1940 (according to a Washington Post article). Google Books contains some of the text of the novel, including use of this term. PGibbons (talk) 21:36, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Melanie
Melanie's "Nickel Song" is not the same song. Altho so far I haven't found the Photograph album to hear the sample of that track. George Slivinsky (talk) 01:17, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Early versions
It is said that at least 20 record companies released versions of the song before and at the same time as Teresa. This would make a good study, and I'm calling for it. Not anything like 3 months later.George Slivinsky (talk) 11:00, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Earlier version?
Somebody commented on a site that I can't identify now that this song existed in 1933 by someone, some kind of version. Something to try to research. George Slivinsky (talk) 04:15, 21 November 2020 (UTC)