Medley

串烧曲 (Medley) is a musical structure in which excerpts from two or more songs, themes, or musical passages are arranged consecutively to form a single performance unit. Each section typically retains enough of the original melody or lyrics to be recognizable, and the sections are connected through key, tempo, rhythm, or newly composed transitions; It is not necessary to perform each piece in its entirety.

A medley can be performed live or produced in a recording studio. It is commonly used in concerts to condense and showcase a large number of older works, while in musicals and film and television soundtracks, multiple themes can be combined to form an overture or finale. The arranger must decide on the selections, order, key changes, and transitions; the medley itself thus forms a new performance and arrangement, but credit for the original works must still be preserved. It differs from a mashup, montage, and segue. A “mashup” typically overlays two or more recordings or musical layers simultaneously, while a “medley” usually presents segments in chronological order; a “segue” is simply a seamless transition between two complete tracks, without the need for cutting or rearrangement; a “montage” is a broader concept of collage. Actual works may combine these methods.

Upon release, an entire medley may be treated as a single track or divided into multiple seamless tracks based on the constituent songs. Titles often list the various parts using slashes, hyphens, or parentheses, though there is no globally standardized syntax for these separators. If a database needs to identify the constituent works, it must not treat the entire recording as a single new song and lose track of the relationships to the original tracks.

A medley may also contain brief references not listed in the packaging title. Whether a segment qualifies as an independent component should be determined based on duration, recognizability, copyright credits, and official track information—rather than mechanically breaking down every melodic allusion.