"All Singing, All Dancing" is the eleventh episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on January 4, 1998. In the fourth Simpsons clip show, Homer claims he hates singing, so Marge shows family videos of musical numbers from previous seasons. The episode is in the form of a sung-through musical, featuring spoken dialogue only at the start and end of the episode. The original material was directed by Mark Ervin and written by Steve O'Donnell. It was executive produced by David Mirkin. It features guest appearances from George Harrison and Phil Hartman, although these are both clips and neither of them recorded original material for the episode. "Who Needs The Kwik-E-Mart?" and "We Do" had previously been nominated for best song at the Primetime Emmy Awards, and "We Put the Spring in Springfield" won the award in 1997.
Production
The episode is the fourth and penultimate clip show episode of The Simpsons. It was put together by Steve O'Donnell, who wrote this episode and "The Joy of Sect" (which, in production order, preceded this episode). Executive producer David Mirkin hated doing clip shows and "wouldn't do them if we had a choice" and this is referenced at the end of the episode. The film Paint Your Wagon is referenced at the beginning of the episode. The film does star Eastwood and Lee Marvin and was directed by Joshua Logan, but the writers did not base their parody or the song on the film at all.
Several of the songs featured in the episode are references to actual musicals. "Springfield, Springfield", sung by Bart and Milhouse, is a reference to "New York, New York", from On the Town. Krusty's "Send in the Clowns" uses different lyrics from the original version by Stephen Sondheim. While at the First Church of Springfield, Bart substitutes the lyrics from Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" to "In the Garden of Eden".
Although he normally dislikes clip shows, Mirkin liked this episode because of the singing and dancing and called the clips "truly wonderful". A review of The Simpsons season 9 DVD release in the Daily Post noted that it includes "super illustrated colour commentaries" on "All Singing, All Dancing" and "Lost Our Lisa". Isaac Mitchell-Frey of the Herald Sun cited the episode as a "low moment" of the season, noting it "recycles parts of previous episodes".
Michael Dunne analyzed the episode in his book American Film Musical Themes and Forms, and gave examples from it while explaining that singing and dancing performances are generally not seen as acceptable in the television medium.