Sitting Sexy on a Piano

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Susie Diamond shows us how it's done.

The trademark of the classic torch singer, Sitting Sexy on a Piano is a stock pose for sultry songbirds of every type, from cabaret crooners to navy nightingales. In essence, the singer sits on or leans heavily against a piano, posturing suggestively. If the piano is big enough, she'll often actually lie on top of it.

Compare Ready for Lovemaking, which this is no doubt meant to invoke. There's often some playful teasing going on with The Piano Player-- and of course the audience.

Do not expect her to be paired with a Lounge Lizard, unless he's actually competent.

Examples of Sitting Sexy on a Piano include:

Comic Books

  • Saloon singers in Lucky Luke albums tend to do this.

Film

  • The film of Chicago: Roxie Hart during her imaginary first performance (My Funny Honey) rides this pony for all it's worth.
  • The Fairy Godmother does this in Shrek 2 when she's singing "I Need a Hero".
  • In The Fabulous Baker Boys, Michelle Pfeiffer frequently does this; it's even the page image!
    • Parodied in Hot Shots, where the singer lies on a grand piano and (in the process of wiggling seductively) manages to shimmy right off.
  • Used to disturbing effect with John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. Malkovich Malkovich.
  • Ralph Bakshi's Cool World has this with the Femme Fatale villainess.
  • Johnny Dangerously. Johnny's girlfriend Lil Sheridan does this while singing in a nightclub.
  • Parodied/exaggerated in Cats Don't Dance, when the sickeningly-sweet child actress does this on a piano sized for her enormous butler Max. You get the impression she could roll around for several hours and never be in danger of falling off.

Live-Action TV

  • The Benny Hill Show: Benny would frequently play a singer who has trouble hopping up onto the piano.
  • The Office: Jan does this for her scene in Michael's movie, "Threat Level Midnight".
  • In an Imagine Spot in Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Miss Musso is seen doing this.
  • Saturday Night Live parodied this trope twice:
    • On the LeBron James/Kanye West episode (the first episode of season 33) had the Digital Short, "Iran So Far," which featured Fred Armisen as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a red dress on top of a piano.
    • On the Sigourney Weaver/The Ting Tings episode (from season 35), Weaver plays a lounge singer who invokes this trope, but ends up yelling at the piano player (played by Bobby Moynihan) when she starts freaking out about how high up she is ( The piano player thinks she's kidding, until she ends up falling 60 feet and the piano player immediately notices).
  • Haley Reinhart on American Idol. B-B-B-Benny. And the Jetsssss..... Also doubles as She's Got Legs. And hoooooooooooooow.
  • The Kids in The Hall: Parodied by Kevin McDonald in this sketch.
  • On an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Wayne Brady does this during a playing of Greatest Hits while singing in the style of Eartha Kitt. Here's the clip.
  • Israeli skit show The Chamber Quintette has a skit parodying this, with Keren Mor singing Bab el-Wad, a memorial song for dead soldiers, as a sexy cabaret girl.

Music

Newspaper Comics

Theatre

  • This was Helen Morgan's routine in the 1920s; she performed "Bill" this way (for a rather dissipated version of "sexy") in the original production of Show Boat (but not the 1936 film version).

Web Comics

  • Bug Martini claims that a downside to owning a piano is that one is always having to shoo sultry lounge singers off it before their sequins scratch the varnish.

Western Animation

  • Dot Warner occasionally does this on Animaniacs.
  • Lois of Family Guy did this after Peter remodeled their basement into a club.
  • June does this in an episode of KaBlam!
  • Clarice, a chipmunk lounge singer, does this in the Chip and Dale short Two Chips and a Miss.
  • Laverne the old lady gargoyle in The Hunchback of Notre Dame puts on a feather boa and poses on a piano during their Disney Acid Sequence.
  • Ling-Ling does this for his musical number on the Drawn Together musical series finale.
  • Doug: Patti Mayonnaise in one of Doug Funnie's fantasy sequences

Real Life

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