"99 Bottles of Beer" or "100 Bottles of Pop on the Wall" is a song dating to the mid-20th century. It is a traditional reverse
counting song in both the United States and Canada. It is popular to sing on road trips, as it has a very
repetitive format which is easy to memorize and can take a long time when families sing. In particular, the song is often sung by children on long
school bus
A school bus is any type of bus owned, leased, contracted to, or operated by a school or school district. It is regularly used to transport students to and from school or school-related activities, but not including a charter bus or transit bus ...
trips, such as class field trips, or on
Scout
Scout may refer to:
Youth movement
*Scout (Scouting), a child, usually 10–18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement
**Scouts (The Scout Association), section for 10-14 year olds in the United Kingdom
**Scouts BSA, sectio ...
or
Girl Guide outings.
Lyrics
The song's lyrics are as follows, with mathematical values substituted:
(n) bottles of beer on the wall. (n) bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, (n-1) bottles of beer on the wall. (caution: this mathematical formula ends with n=1, the song does not use negative numbers).
![99 bottles of beer-1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/99_bottles_of_beer-1.png)
Alternative line:
If one of those bottles should happen to fall,
98 bottles of beer on the wall...
The same verse is repeated, each time with one bottle fewer, until there is none left. Variations on the last verse following the last bottle going down include lines such as:
No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer.
Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall...
Or:
No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer.
We've taken them down and passed them around; now we're drunk and passed out!
Other alternate lines read:
If that one bottle should happen to fall, what a waste of alcohol!
Or:
No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer.
There's nothing else to fall, because there's no more bottles of beer on the wall.
Or:
The song does not stop at the last "1" or "0" bottles of beer but continues counting with −1 (Negative one) Bottles of beer on the wall Take one down, pass it around, −2 (negative 2) bottles of beer on the wall... continuing onward through the negative numbers
Andy Kaufman routine
The boring and time-consuming nature of the "99 Bottles of Beer" song means that probably only a minority of renditions are done to the final verse. The American comedian
Andy Kaufman exploited this fact in the routine early in his career when he would actually sing all 100 verses.
Atticus
Atticus, a band from Knoxville, Tennessee, recorded a 13.5-minute live version of the song in its entirety at a club in Glasgow, Scotland, called
The Cathouse. It was included in the 2001 album ''Figment''. Rich Stewart (also known as Barroom Rambler) listed it as the number one
drinking song out of 86 in an article for ''
Modern Drunkard
''Modern Drunkard'' is a glossy color periodical humorously promoting the lifestyle of the "functional alcoholic".
History
Frank Kelly Rich founded ''Modern Drunkard'' in 1996. The first issue was 16 photocopied pages with made-up ads; in 20 ...
'' the following year.
Mathematically inspired variants
Donald Byrd
Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter and vocalist. A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was one of the few hard bop m ...
has collected dozens of variants inspired by
mathematical concepts and written by himself and others.
(A subset of his collection has been published.)
Byrd argues that the collection has pedagogic as well as amusement value. Among his variants are:
*"Infinity bottles of beer on the wall". If one bottle is taken down, there are still
infinite bottles of beer on the wall (thus creating an unending sequence much like "
The Song That Never Ends
"The Song That Doesn't End" (also referred to as "The Song That Never Ends") is a self-referential and infinitely iterative children's song. The song appears in an album by puppeteer Shari Lewis titled '' Lamb Chop's Sing-Along, Play-Along'', rel ...
").
**"Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall".
Aleph-null is the size of the set of all
natural number
In mathematics, the natural numbers are those numbers used for counting (as in "there are ''six'' coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the ''third'' largest city in the country").
Numbers used for counting are called ''Cardinal n ...
s, and is the smallest infinity and the only
countable one; therefore, even if an infinite aleph-null of bottles fall, the same amount remains.
**"Aleph-one/two/three/etc. bottles of beer on the wall".
Aleph-one, two, three, etc. are uncountable infinite sets, which are larger than countable ones; therefore, if only a countable infinity of bottles fall, an uncountable number remains.
Other versions in Byrd's collection involve concepts including
geometric progressions,
differentials,
Euler's identity
In mathematics, Euler's identity (also known as Euler's equation) is the equality
e^ + 1 = 0
where
: is Euler's number, the base of natural logarithms,
: is the imaginary unit, which by definition satisfies , and
: is pi, the ratio of the circum ...
,
complex number
In mathematics, a complex number is an element of a number system that extends the real numbers with a specific element denoted , called the imaginary unit and satisfying the equation i^= -1; every complex number can be expressed in the form ...
s,
summation notation, the
Cantor set
In mathematics, the Cantor set is a set of points lying on a single line segment that has a number of unintuitive properties. It was discovered in 1874 by Henry John Stephen Smith and introduced by German mathematician Georg Cantor in 1883.
Thr ...
, the
Fibonacci sequence, and the
continuum hypothesis, among others.
References in computer science
The
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
Donald Knuth proved that the song has a
complexity
Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interaction, interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence.
The term is generall ...
of
in his
in-joke
An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or a private joke, is a joke whose humour is understandable only to members of an ingroup; that is, people who are ''in'' a particular social group, occupation, or other community of shared interest. It i ...
-article "
The Complexity of Songs
"The Complexity of Songs" is a scholarly article by computer scientist Donald Knuth in 1977, as an in-joke about computational complexity theory. The article capitalizes on the tendency of popular songs to devolve from long and content-rich ballads ...
".
Numerous computer programs exist to output the lyrics to the song. This is analogous to
"Hello, World!" program
A "Hello, World!" program is generally a computer program that ignores any input and outputs or displays a message similar to "Hello, World!". A small piece of code in most general-purpose programming languages, this program is used to illustra ...
s, with the addition of a
loop
Loop or LOOP may refer to:
Brands and enterprises
* Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live
* Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets
* Loop Mobile, an ...
. As with "Hello World!", this can be a practice exercise for those studying computer programming, and a demonstration of different
programming paradigms dealing with looping constructs and syntactic differences between programming languages within a paradigm.
The program has been written in over 1,500 different programming languages.
Examples
Classical
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
syntax
FOR Bottle = 99 TO 1 STEP -1
PRINT STR(Bottle) +" bottles of beer on the wall, "+ STR(Bottle) +" bottles of beer"
PRINT "Take one down and pass it around, "+ STR(Bottle-1) +" bottles of beer on the wall"
NEXT Bottle
C++
#include
int main()
C#
for (int bottleNumber = 99; bottleNumber > 1; bottleNumber--)
Console.WriteLine("1 bottle of beer on the wall, 1 bottle of beer");
Console.WriteLine("Take one down and pass it around, no bottles of beer on the wall");
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
$numberBottles = 99;
while ($numberBottles > 1)
echo "Just $numberBottles bottle of beer on the wall
";
echo "Just $numberBottles bottle of beer
";
echo "If you take it down
";
echo "And pass it around
";
echo "There'll be no more bottles of beer on the wall.
";
Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
for bottles in range(99, 1, -1):
print(f' bottles of beer on the wall, bottles of beer.')
print(f'Take one down and pass it around, bottles of beer on the wall')
print(f'1 bottle of beer on the wall, 1 bottle of beer.')
print('Take one down and pass it around, no more bottles of beer on the wall!')
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
public class Bottles
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
for (let bottleNum = 99; bottleNum > 0; bottleNum--)
See also
* "
Potje met vet" – a traditional Dutch song sung in the same style
* "
Ten Green Bottles
"Ten Green Bottles" is a popular children's repetitive song that consists of a single verse of music that is repeated, with each verse decrementing by one the number of bottles on the wall. The first verse is:
This pattern continues until t ...
" – a similar song which is popular in the United Kingdom
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:99 Bottles Of Beer
American folk songs
American children's songs
Traditional children's songs
Drinking songs