"There's No Business Like Show Business" is an Irving Berlin song, written for Annie Get Your Gun. The song, a salute to the glamour and excitement of a life in show business, is sung in the musical by members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in an attempt to persuade Annie Oakley to join the Wild West Show. It is reprised twice in the musical.
The song is also featured in the 1954 movie of the same name, where it's notably sung by Ethel Merman as the main musical number. The movie, directed by Walter Lang, is essentially a catalogue of various Berlin's pieces, in the same way that Singin' in the Rain — which starred Donald O'Connor as well — was a collection of Arthur Freed songs. There was also a disco version of the song made during the 1970s, with Merman reprising her singing role (see The Ethel Merman Disco Album).
On their album Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2, the sound collage band Negativland edited samples of Ethel Merman's performance as part of one track, in which she is made to praise theft of all kinds, particularly theft of music, as another way of satirizing copyright issues. This would later be expanded into the title track of the No Business album, with both the movie version and the disco version edited and mixed together.
