No Song for the Wicked

Many villains, especially from musicals or Disney animation, have impressive songs in which they boast about how good it feels being evil, or that use to expose their Evil Plan.

But there are also villains that don't have a song. While The Hero and his or her companions have their own musical numbers, the villain doesn't sing a single note. This choice can be made for various reasons: to show that the villain is a Serious Business individual, to highlight his or her scary nature, or maybe because the villain has a bad voice. It could also have happened that the villain was originally meant to have a song, but for various reason it ended up being cut.

Remember: this trope applies when there's the lack of a Villain Song in a work in which such a song would be expected.

Contrast Villain Song. Could overlap with Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor, but not always. Evil Is Cool and Evil Is Hammy have less chance to apply to a villain who follows this trope.

Examples of No Song for the Wicked include:

Film - Animated

• The Queen from Snow White.
• Despite singing a single line while playing the piano, the Stepmother in Cinderella has no Villain Song, which makes her even more scary.
• Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty was actually going to have a Villain Song, but it was cut.
• Yzma from The Emperors New Groove.
  • Yzma was going to have a (completely awesome) theme called "Snuff Out The Light" when the movie was still called The Kingdom Of The Sun, but obviously that never happened.
• Tzekel-Kan in The Road to El Dorado didn't get a song.
• Shan Yu from Mulan.
• Clayton from Tarzan.
• Jafar from Aladdin is a borderline case: he only did a Dark Reprise of "Prince Ali" but had no Villain Song of his own, although some were written for him.
  • In Return of Jafar, however, he had "You're Only Second Rate".
• Cruella De Vil from One Hundred and One Dalmatians never sang, although others sing about her.
• Madame Medusa from The Rescuers.
• Hades from |Hercules, despite being such a Large Ham. He did sing in the TV spinoff, however.
• Shere Khan from The Jungle Book, who actually did not sing at all except for the final lyrics of "That's What Friends Are For." He was originally going to have his own Villain Song, however.
• Inverted in Home on the Range where the evil cattle thief and yodeler Alameda Slim is the only character to sing in the film.
• The Horned King from The Black Cauldron. That's because it's the first animated Disney film not to be a musical.

Film - Live Action

• Singin' in the Rain: Lina Lamont has no singing number, since her voice is really awful. It should be remembered, however, that Jean Hagen (the actress portraying her) was a good singer, and actually all the singing that Debbie Reynolds' character did for her within the movie.
• In the movie version of Oliver!, Bill Sykes never sings, although other people sing about him. In the stage version, instead, he does.
• In the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch doesn't get to sing. It's worth noting, however, that her counterpart in The Wiz does have a song.
  • And then there's Wicked, where the Witch gets buckets of songs and her antagonist the Wizard gets to sing as well.
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote some new songs for the stage version of "The Wizard of Oz", including a song for the Witch called "Red Shoes Blues". The song is better than the title suggests and it basically opens the second act.

Live Action TV

• There are many fans of Buffy who see the appeal of both the Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling," and the villainous activities of the Trio of Warren, Andrew, and Jonathan. Such fans would, no doubt, have loved for the episode to have a Villain Song by the Trio. The writers surely could have come up with something good, and of course the actors were all guest stars who were probably completely available for an episode in that season. No doubt, though, it would have been too difficult, and involved sacrificing too much of the screen time used for other stuff, to rewrite the episode in such a way that it included the Trio. But the magical effect that caused everyone to burst into song was operating throughout Sunnydale, so of course there must have been some such song that happened off-screen, which was not recorded by the TV show—but that's exactly the kind of thing Fan Fiction is for...

Western Animation

• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has quite a few musical numbers and while the majority of the songs are sung by Pinkie Pie, everyone else has gotten in on the action at least once. If not a solo number then during a Crowd Song. However, thus far none of the antagonists have had a Villain Song. This is especially odd when several of the antagonists have had hammy enough personalities that it would fit them.
  • Finally averted with the Flim Flam Brothers in season 2.
  • And then a proper villain finally gets a song in the finale. Technically, the villain is sharing it, but since she sings,^[1] it still counts.

1. ↑ And her voice actor is actually singing both parts