The song's lyrics express a carpe diem sentiment, with the singer noting that the inchworm of the title has a "business-like mind", and is blind to the beauty of the flowers it encounters: Subsequent verses include the lines "Measuring the marigolds, you and your arithmetic / You’ll probably go far" and "Seems to me you’d stop and see / How beautiful they are" Loesser wrote a counterpoint chorus that, sung by itself, has become popular as a children's song because of its arithmetical chorus: In the film, a children's chorus sings the contrapuntal "arithmetic" section over and over inside a small classroom, dolefully and by rote, while Andersen, listening just outside, gazes at an inchworm crawling on the flowers and sings the main section of the song. Loesser loved the intellectual challenge of such contrapuntal composition, which he also did in other works such as Tallahassee.
Reception
The composer received a fan letter which said of the song: Loesser was so touched by the letter that he placed a large advertisement in the largest newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas — the Daily Journal World — in thanks. His correspondent wrote again, revealing herself to be teacher Emily Preyer.
Inchworm has been performed in skits on Jim Henson's Sesame Street and The Muppet Show; the song was done twice by Charles Aznavour, once in a regular sketch, and then again with Danny Kaye and the Muppets when he was on the show. In the Quantum Leap episode Another Mother, Al sang it as a lullaby. It was used in a 1995 episode of the UKtelevision programmeBBC Horizons, entitled "Nanotopia", during a segment explaining the "assemblers" of Eric Drexler. The song also briefly featured in the popular British schools drama Grange Hill, being sung by the school choir during rehearsals. It was featured at the end of a fourth season episode of the show Northern Exposure. There was also a Hebrew version of the song, sung by children and a male singer. In 2010, twice Ivor Novello Awards-nominated band The Leisure Society performed the song for the American Laundromat Records kindie compilation, "Sing Me to Sleep - Indie Lullabies." A recording of Danny Kaye singing it was used as the underscoring for a shadow puppet segment on Captain Kangaroo. The song is also sung as a children's lullaby during episode 17 of the first season on the popular TV sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond".
