songanddance

Songanddance is a term used to denote an elaborate, often theatrical display of explanation, excuses, or procedure that accompanies an action or request but provides little substantive substance. In common usage, to give someone the song and dance means offering a lengthy, perhaps entertaining but ultimately unnecessary or unhelpful prelude instead of a direct answer or decisive action. The expression is typically pejorative or humorous, signaling annoyance with rhetoric over results.

The phrase originates in the performing arts. A genuine song-and-dance routine, common in 19th-century stage entertainments, vaudeville, and musical theater, combined singing and dancing as a form of spectacle. Over time, the term broadened beyond show business to describe bureaucratic, political, or managerial rhetoric that resembles such a routine: a sequence of steps, explanations, or approvals that feels more like theater than a straightforward outcome.

Usage and nuance. Songanddance can describe delays, excuses, or proceduralities designed to satisfy formal requirements rather than to resolve a request. It often implies that the listener is being given a show rather than a clear, substantive answer. Variants include the hyphenated form song-and-dance or simply “song and dance routine,” with similar implications in journalism, politics, and everyday speech.

See also: vaudeville, showmanship, bureaucratic delay, rhetorical flourish.