Il Pulcino Pio
You might remember it as Le Poussin Piou, The Little Chick Cheep
Videos everybody knows19 of 40
2012·The social era·cute
A cumulative children's song about farmyard animals that spent eight weeks at number one in Italy and then conquered Europe.
Keep watchingStill to come
What this wasThe story
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. A surviving copy 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.
Why it is here: it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.
- SourceNot an upload originally
- MediaPlayable from the source
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this 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 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.