song and dance

noun

1. a story or statement, especially an untrue or misleading one designed to evade the matter at hand:

   Every time he's late, he gives me a song and dance about oversleeping.

song and dance

noun

1. a fuss, esp one that is unnecessary
2. a long or elaborate story or explanation, esp one that is evasive

Word History and Origins

Origin of song and dance¹

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Idioms and Phrases

An elaborate story or effort to explain and justify something, or to deceive and mislead someone. For example, Do you really believe his song and dance about the alarm not going off, being stopped for speeding, and then the car breaking down? or At every annual meeting the chairman goes through the same song and dance about the company's great future plans . This term originally referred to a vaudeville act featuring song and dance. [Late 1800s]

Example Sentences

The purpose of the evening is clear enough in its format: The majority of the show is about song-and-dance numbers from musicals.

From The Daily Beast

I wanted to discuss the last scene, and the decision to send off Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) with a song-and-dance.

From The Daily Beast

The Oscar host's song-and-dance about actresses' breasts was a big fail, says the famed attorney.

From The Daily Beast

Ridiculous baby plot lines have swirled around song-and-dance soap Glee since day one.

From The Daily Beast

She was also the unquestionable star of the two song-and-dance sequences in this Indo-American mega production.

From The Daily Beast

She does the song-and-dance business with comedy variations.

From Project Gutenberg

The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and contributed most of our entertainment.

From Project Gutenberg

She can't cook, but she can do a song-and-dance that's worth its weight in gold when you're down in the mouth.

From Project Gutenberg

Then a little individual song-and-dance specialty was introduced.

From Project Gutenberg

And rather than hear that song-and-dance again, I gave myself thirty seconds to think.

From Project Gutenberg