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2012·The social era

Il Pulcino Pio

A cumulative children's song about farmyard animals that spent eight weeks at number one in Italy and then conquered Europe.

You might remember it as Le Poussin Piou, The Little Chick Cheep

View this upload on YouTube

This Moment was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.

The story

What this was

A chick cheeps. Then a hen clucks and the chick cheeps. Then a cockerel, a dove, a cat, a dog, a lamb, a goat, a cow, a bull, a tractor. Each verse repeats every animal that came before, faster, until the tractor flattens the lot. Radio Globo in Rome released it in July 2012 with the presenter Morgana Giovannetti singing.

It first appeared in 2012, during the social era. The copy this index knows about is on YouTube.

It is the purest possible demonstration of a form that is older than recorded music — the cumulative song — running at internet speed and scale. The joke is entirely structural and requires no language at all, which is why it was rebuilt in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and half a dozen other languages within a year, each a genuine local chart hit rather than a translation of an import.

It topped the Italian singles chart for eight consecutive weeks and charted across Europe in its local versions. The song is itself a remake of a Brazilian children's song from the 1950s, which makes it a folk melody that has now gone round the world twice by two different technologies.

You were there

More from 2012

The same internet

The social era

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Related

Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.

Behind the record

Where it came from

There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. What it began as is recorded here, and what is shown is a later copy.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens
A chick cheeps. Then a hen clucks and the chick cheeps. Then a cockerel, a dove, a cat, a dog, a lamb, a goat, a cow, a bull, a tractor. Each verse repeats every animal that came before, faster, until the tractor flattens the lot. Radio Globo in Rome released it in July 2012 with the presenter Morgana Giovannetti singing.
Where
Known on YouTube.
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