Rich here. No matter the subject matter, everybody loves lists, right? And, similarly, songs with lists in them tend to be popular. Think of Cole Porter's 1930s-era "Let's Do It," in which Porter lists all the kinds of people and species who "do it" (wink, wink). People loved not only the risqué nature of the lyrics, but they also loved the humor of the list -- "The locusts up in the trees do it / Even over-educated fleas do it."
So popular are lists that Wikipedia even has a whole page devoted to listing (get it?) songs with lists in them.
One extremely popular song with a list was country singer Hank Snow's "I've Been Everywhere" (1962) in which a hitchhiker slowly introduces the song by telling us he's on the road to Winnemucca, but when he's picked up by a trucker, he begins singing so quickly, we can barely keep up with the names. Not only is the song catchy, it's truly amazing how quickly the singer rattles off the list of towns he's visited.
But this version of the song wasn't the first. The song was written in 1959 by Australian country singer Geoff Mack, whose lyrics list all the Australian towns the hitchhiker has visited. The song was later recorded in 1962 by Lucky Starr, an Australian who sings the list even faster than Hank Snow sang his, if possible.
