Talk:The Song That Doesn't End

...Never Ends
Well, I did a few checks. All of the quoted appearances of the song use "The Song that Never Ends", or some variation thereof. (I'm pretty sure about Lamb Chop's Play-Along - though I'm relying on the memories of children, they're the ones who would know.) Most of the references on the Wiki still point to "...Never Ends". Based on this, I'm going to move the page back to "...Never Ends", and note the other as a variation. - Scooter 19:09, 3 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm 100% certain that on Lamb Chop's Play-Along, they sang "this is the song that doesn't end." I watched that show constantly as a teenager (yes, I watched a kid's show, so sue me).  I found a CD on Amazon.com from the TV show -- it doesn't have an official tracklist posted since it appears to be out of print, but both the user reviews identify it as "The Song That Doesn't End."  It may be a variation of the possibly better-known "...Never Ends," but that's still what they were singing and I'd be willing to bet any amount of money on it.
 * --Lazylisa 16:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Lamb Chop's Play-Along episode with the song. Well, the end credits where it shows up, anyway. Kit Foxtrot (talk) 17:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)


 * In the copyright info in the liner notes for Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Que (which contains a rendition of the song), it is listed as "The Song That Doesn't End". Tony Myers 08:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The title is The Song that Doesn't End. Please change to correct title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_47KVJV8DU — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uchosaki (talk • contribs) 22:05, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Doesn’t End! Kplummer08 (talk) 08:36, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Still "Never" instead of "Doesn't". Even though the source's title is "The Song that doesn't end", but the actual main is "never". Allan Bao (talk) 20:02, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Are the lyrics copyrighted or public domain?
It is against Wikipedia policy to include copyrighted lyrics of a song in any article. Can anyone confirm that the two sets of lyrics (in particular the one used for the Shari Lewis TV show) are public domain? If not, they may need to be removed. 23skidoo 15:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
Isn't recursive? How is it any less recursive than "The Song That Never Ends?" Recury 01:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's infinite, but not recursive. One iteration of John Jacob etc. makes sense:

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, His name is my name too. Whenever we go out The people always shout, "There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt." La, la, la, la, la, la


 * But one iteration of this song doesn't:

This is the song that never ends, Yes, it goes on and on, my friend Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, And they'll continue singing it forever just because—


 * See the differences? Ckerr 08:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

death happens here
This song can be adapted to "never end." If one changes the song to "A Quintillion Bottles Of Beer On The Wall," singing the song continuously would take about 475 TRILLION years (give or take several billion). Given current cosmological theories, the universe would collapse upon itself (The Big Crunch), or all of the matter would be Iron 59 (no more matter could be converted into energy) and all the energy in the universe would be "internal energy," thus creating a condition where further entropy increase is impossible. Hence, the universe would end before the song would, and in effect the song would "never end." Weyandt 19:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * A song that takes longer than the age of the universe to end is not mathematically equivalent to a song that goes on forever. For example, if you transpose the quintillion bottles of beer on the wall song up 44 octaves by speeding up the recording, it will only take a 18 months to listen to.  This is hardly even impressive--Wagner's Ring cycle is almost that long!  (Well, so it seems.) Ckerr 08:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Aww, c'mon! First, by my calculations (dividing 475,000,000,000,000 by 2^44 or 17,592,186,044,416) reduces the time to 27 years.  You need to speed up the record by 48 octaves to reduce the song time to a-year-and-a-half.  That isn't the real problem.  Speeding up the record by 44 octaves would make the recording bandwith go from 351,843,720,888,320 Hz to 351,843,720,888,320,000 Hz.  As the fastest processor operates in the GHz range, there isn't any player out there that could play the recording sped up this much.  And then one must consider our inability to hear sounds of such incredibly high frequencies.  Second, the end of the universe would have the same effect on "The Song That Never Ends" and "A Quntillion Bottles of Beer On The Wall."  Both songs would stop at (well, way before) the Big Crunch,  or the new theory about Dark Energy destroying every particle in the universe, called the Big Rip.Weyandt 20:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not just set the first line to "∞ bottles of beer on the wall"? Then the song would continue "∞ - 1 bottles", "∞ - 2 bottles", and so on ad infinitum. That would be a never-ending version of the song. --Nucleusboy 18:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * When you think about it, that's a good idea. Also remember that ∞ - 1 = ∞, because ∞ is an undefined number.  So you'd "take one down, pass it around," and still have "infinity bottles of beer on the wall."  The song becomes infinite and recursive.  Of course, this isn't as funny as taking one down with a quintillion bottles up there, and trying to sing "nine-hundred-ninety-nine-quadrillion-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-trillion-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-billion-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-million-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall."Weyandt 17:09, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It should be noted that, at Harvey Mudd College, there's a set of games played called the ITR Games. One such game involves zombies shambling around. It's been tradition to sing zombie songs - among them, "aleph-null bottles of brains on the wall." (And by "it should be noted", I obviously mean "in general", not "on the node this talk page belongs to".)


 * I love this talk page. It made me laugh.  By the way, there is a Wiki article called 99 Bottles of Beer.  Soap Talk/Contributions 15:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I originally learned this song as:

"This is the song that never ends. Yes it goes on and on, my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, And now they can't stop singing it because..."

It sounds better like this than the one in the article. They should put in this variation as well. Note that there's an extremely short pause between "people" and "started" 98.197.59.217 (talk) 20:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I remember the song as:

This is the song that never ends. Yes it goes on and on, my friends. Some people... started singing it not knowing what it was, And they'll continue singing it forever just because...


 * It was from a TV series that I used to watch as a kid some time ago that I can't remember the name of. Lightsup55 ( T | C ) 21:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I note that the page states that "Everybody's Nerves" gets repeated ad infinitum. I feel it's more thematically appropriate to say that it continues ad nauseam. :) Cirne (talk) 18:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

1st and 8th variants of I Know a Song that Gets on Everybody's Nerves
8th variant is 1st variant with punctuation. Is it necessary? Lacrymocéphale 11:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course not. At the risk of violating the assumption of good faith, I will say that it seems clear to me that the high number of extra variants are taking the piss on the fact that the song is infinitely repeatable. Jaimeastorga2000 (talk) 02:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I removed all the lyrics in the song because (1) they are unencyclopedic [Wikipedia is WP:NOT a lyrics database] and (2) they are probably non-free, given the origin of composition mentioned in the article. RJaguar3 &#124; u &#124; t 16:14, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Media
Should this page have a picture or a video or something? From Hector Neeleman of Wielvakia, aka

--Solowing106 (talk) 00:11, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Additional citations
Why and where does this article need additional citations for verification? What references does it need and how should they be added? Hyacinth (talk) 08:29, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Mulberry Bush?
Am I crazy, or is the 'Here we go around the Mulberry Bush' and 'I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves' completely different in terms of tune? Excise (talk) 23:24, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I was thinking that as I read. They are different tunes. It might be more similiar to "I've got a lov-e-ly bunch of coconuts ", but I'm not sure--Zfish118 (talk) 21:35, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Another variation
"I know a song that'll get on your nerves. Get on your nerves, get on your nerves. I know a song that'll get on your nerves, And it goes like this..."

(repeat..) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.175.23.34 (talk) 04:53, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The Song That Doesn't End
It looks like the previous discussion about the name change was nearly six years ago (15th of March 2008). Now that I've created the article to the actual album; I'd like to bust some misconceptions.

To begin:
 * The Song That Doesn't End was written by an author called Norman L. Martin in 1988.
 * This song is in NO WAY related to any of the other songs in this article. Those songs are also NOT notable.
 * The content in this article is for the most part; laughable. I don't mean that in a good way.  It looks like a disaster.  Wikipedia is NOT a book of riddles; it is an information encyclopedia.
 * When I came to edit here, no reliable sources had been given.
 * Whatever you think about how the song goes does not matter, just because the song "sounds" better with other lyrics, or just because people might sing it differently (intensified by the fact that Wikipedia has had inaccurate information about this song since 2006!) does not mean a thing. The information is not true, and should be fixed.
 * I did my part, the page needs to be renamed.

More information about the song, can be found here:


 * Lamb Chop's Sing-Along, Play-Along
 * Allmusic's entry for this album
 * Discogs' entry for this album
 * Listen to the entire album in Grooveshark

Let's have a chat about this please, thanks. --Molokaicreeper (talk) 02:23, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I made a request here as well:


 * Wikiproject Song Discussion --Molokaicreeper (talk) 02:52, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Wrong Norman Martin
I think this article links to the wrong Norman Martin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.241.89.250 (talk) 01:55, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

This could not have been written in 1988.
I am a childless 68 year old who never saw Lamb Chop's Play Along. I only watched Shari Lewis on The Shari Lewis Show when I was a child living in the suburbs of NYC. I've known the song since around 1960 and even thinking about it always beings a smile. I idly googled it recently to see if Shari wrote it alone or had a collaborator. (She was so multi-talented it's sometimes hard to believe that she created so many different aspects of the show.) The reference on the recording must have referred to an updated, more complicated arrangement with additional musicians and perhaps other voices. In 1988 I was 40 years old and I most certainly did not first hear it then. Just shows how little documentation there was for early local TV. For instance, try to find the kinescopes of that show. If they once existed, they almost certainly are gone now. HoiPoloi (talk) 23:46, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You are right the music was copyrighted in 1983 by someone else link Contentcreator (talk) 05:39, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Frustrated Beyond
The title of this article is incorrect. Anyone can Google and YouTube the actual song, and see and hear the actual song from the original show.

The lyrics are continuously updated to incorrect lyrics saying the song that never ends.

It is the SONG THAT DOESN’T END!!!

Watch a minute of the show and stop changing it to something that is incorrect! If this website ever wants to be a reputable source of information, the users need to have an ounce of intelligence and be able to source the material. Kplummer08 (talk) 08:35, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Still is the song that never ends. Even though other sources say "The song that doesn't end". The origin of the song was titled "The song that never ends", the version "THe song that doesn't end" (from Lamb Chop's Play Along) was actually the lyrics. So still is the "song that never ends". Allan Bao (talk) 12:54, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Here is a version that has the lyrics saying the song that never ends.

Allan Bao (talk) 16:27, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

1988 home video
What does this statement here mean?

"The song appears in an album by puppeteer Shari Lewis titled Lamb Chop's Sing-Along, Play-Along, based on a 1988 home video"

What is based on a 1988 home video? The claim that it appears on this album is based on a video, or is the song based on (originated from) a 1988 home video? Because the show didn't air until 1992.... If the latter, where is the proof of that claim? 50.255.227.97 (talk) 00:28, 9 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Nine months later, but here goes: The VHS video and the album are copyright 1988. See https://www.discogs.com/release/5462690-Shari-Lewis-Lambchop-Lamb-Chops-Sing-Along-Play-Along
 * - see video embedded there, or view it on YouTube here.
 * Song starts around 5:53, but setup starts around 5:00. For the 1988 copyright of the VHS, see credit at 43:00.
 * Album copyright year can be seen in photos at the Discogs link. Click album cover to see more images.
 * There was also a book in 1988, but I’m too lazy to go back and locate the link from Amazon (I think).
 * I guess copyright date and release date aren’t necessarily the same. Searching online I get both 1988 and 1992 for release year - for the album at least. I’m fairly sure VHS was 1988. Maybe. Hope this helps a bit. Maybe it just adds to the confusion because I’ve confused myself at this point. lol 68.52.185.132 (talk) 03:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete and Move to Lamp Chop article?
Should this article be deleted and all the information (or lack thereof) be copy/pasted into the existing Lamp Chop article instead? CarlSerafino (talk) 10:12, 20 November 2023 (UTC)