This is a real e-mail that I had occasion to write yesterday. This… is my life.

Hi there.

So, we put our heads together on this issue, and this is the best solution we could determine.

The 6th Edition of the Publication Manual for the American Psychological Association provides instructions for how to cite a music recording on page 210.

52. Music Recording

lang, k. d. (2008). Shadow and the frame. On Watershed [CD]. New
     York, NY: Nonesuch Records

In text citations, include side and band or track numbers: “Shadow and the Frame” (lang, 2008, track 10).

Note that the musician’s chosen capitalization overrules conventions of the English language, in which first letters of names are capitalized. One problem you may run into, I’m afraid, is that there may not be a known author, or known date of publication, nor may there be an album from which one could gather publication information.

We feel that you could easily make the case that “Old MacDonald” is considered “common knowledge,” and therefore not in need of citation. If you choose to cite it, however, you’re going to type:

n. d. Old MacDonald.

And that’s it. (n. d. simply means “no date.”) You likely don’t know a date, author, or publication information. An in-text citation, then, would look like this: And on that farm there was a pig (“Old MacDonald,” n. d.).

Finally, note that if you’re citing a specific version of “Old MacDonald” from a specific recording, you will need to cite the song as provided above for the music recording with as much information as you have available.

Hope this helps!

Patrick Wilson
Webster University Writing Center