We apologize in advance for all the TV theme songs we are about to lodge back into your heads. Or maybe we should preemptively accept your thanks?
Despite periodic attempts to contract or outright eliminate them, theme songs are a crucial part of the TV-watching experience. The best ones put you in the right mindset to watch each episode of your favorite, and can be just as entertaining in their own right as any great joke, monologue, or action sequence. So we’ve decided to pick the 100 best theme songs of all time — technically 101, since there are two as inextricably linked as peanut butter and jelly — and attempted to rank them in order of greatness.
How did we figure this out, beyond just arguing about it over Slack, Zoom, ham radio, etc?
First, we assembled a massive list of great songs from throughout the entire long history of TV. We then pared that down by looking for diversity in terms of style of music, style of show, and era. (Honestly, the entire 100 could have been made up of shows from the Seventies. Apologies to The White Shadow, What’s Happening??, and many more that did not make the final list.) Some were written expressly for that show, while others were pre-existing songs given new life through their association with a particular series.
Then we considered two main factors: 1)How great is it as a song? 2)How well does it prepare you for the show that follows, in terms of mood and/or an explanation of the premise? Sometimes, one factor weighed more heavily than the other, and many bitter fights were fought. (There are still hurt feelings regarding which of ABC’s T.G.I.F. family sitcoms got the nod and which ones didn’t.) Like any attempt to quantify art, there was ultimately a lot of gut feelings involved: On its own, Theme Song A is an objectively better piece of music than Theme Song B, but Theme Song B is a much more perfect match for its show.
This list — with many of the blurbs owing a debt to the wealth of theme song history in the book TV’s Greatest Hits by Jon Burlingame — is our attempt to explain why we chose these 100 over any or all of your favorites.
Enjoy, and get to humming.
‘WandaVision’
Several shows on this list changed their theme songs over the years. WandaVision changed its theme song for every episode — twice in one episode, in fact! As the MCU’s first Disney+ series morphed into tributes to various classic sitcoms, the Frozen songwriting team of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez continually figured out clever pastiches of iconic TV themes that became as earworm-y in their own way as the originals. And in the case of the Munsters-esque “Agatha All Along,” the parody turned out to be more memorable than the original. —A.S.
‘Terriers’
Some theme songs wind up long outliving the show they were in, like Harry Nillson’s “Best Friend” from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Sometimes, though, a great song gets doomed to obscurity right along with the short-lived show it introduced. Case in point: “Gunfight Epiphany,” Rob Duncan’s laid-back surf guitar theme to Terriers, an absurdly charming detective drama that almost nobody watched. —A.S.
‘Three’s Company’
The Boogie Nights of sitcom themes. Three’s Company is the hijinks of three swingin’ singles sharing a 1970s Santa Monica, California, party pad: John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt, and Suzanne Somers. The network wanted to keep it clean, but the show’s humor depends on tantalizing viewers with hints that the next co*ke orgy was just an ad-break away. So “Come and Knock on Our Door” is a playfully flirty invitation to a decadent ménage à trois, disguised as a wholesome Tupperware party. (“The kisses are hers and hers and his,” eh?) It was written by Joe Raposo, the Sesame Street genius who gave us “Somebody Come and Play,” “Bein’ Green,” and “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco.” The vocals are credited to “Ray Charles,” but not the real one — just a white-guy imposter. As the song suggests, everybody got lucky in this house — except, tragically, the long-suffering Mrs. Roper. —R.S.
‘Rescue Me’
The Denis Leary firefighter drama needed intro music to match the anguished pain of its FDNY characters in the aftermath of 9/11. Enter garage rockers the Von Bondies, whose “C’mon, C’mon” was the exact kind of furious howl the series needed. —A.S.
‘CHiPs’
For NBC’s youth-aimed police drama starring the blandly handsome blonde no one remembers as straight man to the easygoing macho of breakout star Erik Estrada, composer John Parker put together a glossy piece of synth-y triumphalism reminiscent of florid disco hits like Le Pregunta’s “Shangri-La.” The CHiPS tune’s instant kid appeal would also pave the way for Stu Phillips and Glen A. Larson’s Knight Rider theme. —M.M.
‘The Partridge Family’
Let’s be honest: There are better songs in the Partridge catalog than the ditty that opened this sitcom about a fictional family band. “I’ll Meet You Halfway” and “I Woke Up in Love This Morning,” fronted by series star David Cassidy, were as good as anything on AM radio in the early Seventies. But “Come On Get Happy” captured the bubbly, beyond-wholesome vibe of the series, and you just have to love the opening harpsichord riff. (The song was also co-written by Wes Farrell, a titan of bubblegum pop who also had a hand in writing Sixties hits like “Hang On Sloopy,” “Come On Down to My Boat,” “Come a Little Bit Closer,” and some of those Partridge singles, including “Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted.”) An alternate version of the song — with the line “Danny got Reuben to sell our song” — also gave TV viewers an inside look at the machinations of the music business: Danny Partridge, publishing hustler! —D.B.
‘New Girl’
Of course the quirky queen of twee would write and sing her own theme song. But did the pilot also have to feature a scene where her character, Jess, comes up with it? The opening sequence works, though, because it doesn’t just set the tone for the show — Jess’ mini-dress style and cut-out craft aesthetic are on full view — it also reveals the dynamic of the foursome at the show’s center. The cutesiness apparently turned off male viewers, though, so starting with Season Four, they swapped in an electric-guitar rendition instead. “I was kind of sad [about that],” Zoey Deschanel later told EW. “They were like, ‘We think men are going to think the show is too female if it’s this way.'” —E.G.P.
‘I Dream of Jeannie’
A flouncy, brassy bit of bossa nova with a belly-dance vibe that perfectly evoked all the playfully exotic possibilities of having a live-in full-time genie at your place, the classic I Dream of Jeannie theme was written by the prolific Hollywood bandleader Hugo Montenegro. It worked in much the same way that Montenegro’s version of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” did: His Jeannie jingle is both a little square and a stone gas. The show’s creator, Sidney Sheldon, would later become the author of a string of romantic-adventure bestsellers. —M.M.
‘All That’
A great song sung by an iconic group, the great R&B trio TLC. Nickelodeon’s child-friendly version of a Saturday Night Live-type sketch-comedy show started the careers of Amanda Bynes, current SNL member Kenan Thompson, and Nick Cannon (years before his current gig repopulating the world). The original run was from 1994 to 2005, with a short-lived revival in 2019 that came to an end during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Thankfully, the revival kept the Nineties R&B theme song (with the new addition of Thompson’s voice in the beginning), so kids and parents alike could groove to its nostalgic throwback track — that is, before mom ran to grab her CrazySexyCool CD and started telling stories about the good ol’ days. —T.K.
‘Have Gun, Will Travel’
The aptly-named actor-singer-songwriter Johnny Western (née Westerlund) was guest-starring in an episode of the Richard Boone Western at the time his wife was giving birth to their daughter. Anxious about being away from his family at such an important moment, Western would later say, “I picked up my guitar for something to do, and started playing and singing ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky.’ And this ‘Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?’ started coming out, to exactly the same beat as ‘Ghost Riders.'” He dashed out the rest of the song in 20 minutes on a yellow legal pad, and later presented it to Boone and Have Gun co-creator Sam Rolfe as “a musical thank-you card for having me on the show.” Both liked “The Ballad of Paladin” so much — and contributed a few suggestions that led to them having a shared songwriting credit — that they made it the series’ closing theme starting in the second season. It’s both one of the most memorable songs — from the most dominant genre of TV’s early years — and one of the more famous examples of a show saving its best theme for the end of each episode, rather than the beginning. (Many years later, River Phoenix and the other kids from Stand by Me would sing “The Ballad of Paladin” to buoy themselves early in their journey.) —A.S.
‘The Walking Dead’
Composer Bear McCreary, who honed his comics-and-sci-fi chops writing music for Battlestar Galactica, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Outlander, admitted that the opening music for this zombie-world epic “is among the simpler theme songs out there.” And he’s right: At 34 seconds, it’s essentially the same overcast symphonic riff played over and over, with some modulation and additional strings. McCreary says he was inspired by the work of legendary scorer Bernard Hermann. But McCreary became the new master of suspense with this piece of music, which evokes what it must feel like to be chased by a zombie that’s getting closer and closer by the second, until the music — and your life — comes to an abrupt stop. —D.B.
‘The Olympics’
An indelible sports broadcasting theme like Monday Night Football’s classic four-note fanfare or John Tesh’s basketball-boosting “Roundball Rock” can make even an unexceptional regular-season game feel like a special event. But there’s never been a grander intro than the one that signals another day of Olympics coverage. ABC started using Leo Arnaud’s booming “Bugler’s Dream” in 1968; and in 1984, John Williams expanded its heralding blare into a longer composition that’s been an Olympiad staple ever since, across multiple networks. The song is triumphantly symphonic, sounding like a thrilling race and a victory parade, all at once. —N.M.
‘Stranger Things’
Like everything else about the Netflix horror juggernaut, the theme song is a loving homage to Eighties pop culture. In this case, electronic musicians Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein are paying tribute to synth-heavy Eighties scores by the likes of John Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, and Vangelis. As the show’s neon-lit titles gradually come into focus, Dixon and Stein’s theme hurls wave after (new) wave of dread at the viewer, bracing us for the terrors to come while emotionally sending us back in time to the peak era of Stephen King and kids on bikes getting into supernatural trouble. —A.S.
‘The Big Bang Theory’
Certainly the only TV theme song to use a college-level word like “autotrophs,” this quick, slick little pop-punk tune from Canadian band the Barenaked Ladies cleverly signaled that The Big Bang Theory would be a show that could effortlessly turn nerdy stuff like physics trivia and comic-book lore into adorably accessible sitcom fodder. Show creator Chuck Lorre originally wanted to use Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson’s acoustic demo of the song (which is titled “History of Everything”), but Robertson insisted on doing it with the band. For the show’s finale, Robertson gifted Lorre with a new version of that old demo, which poignantly played as the gang eats Chinese food in Leonard and Penny’s living room during the show’s closing scene. —J.D.
‘The Flintstones’
The Flintstones used a peppy instrumental tune as the intro music for the first two seasons, but when the show became a huge hit, the producers decided to go big by having Hanna-Barbera musical director Hoyt Curtin team up with a 22-piece big band and the Randy Van Horne Singers to create a jazzy theme with lyrics. “I decided to go with the jazz band and singers after the lyric was written,” Curtin said in 1994. “I wrote that sucker in a real panic because we were way behind.” That sucker became one of the most beloved cartoon theme songs of all time, recognizable to kids that grew up in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and beyond. In 1994, it was covered by the B-52s for the Flintstones live-action movie. “Hearing that dang tune all over, I feel like the forgotten man,” Curtin said when it came out. “I really do.” —A.G.
‘Dallas’
Dallas ruled the ratings as the glitziest, nastiest, juiciest of the night-time soaps, a sex-and-money trash epic with the Ewing family conniving over their Texas oil empire and stabbing each others’ backs at the Southfork Ranch. It makes Succession look like milquetoast piffle. You can hear that in Jerrod Immel’s theme, with its horn fanfare and disco flash. Nothing country here — this was a theme for the money-hustling Sun Belt of the “greed is good” Eighties, with Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing — the Tony Soprano of his era — wheeling his dirty deals in a cowboy hat and an evil grin. —R.S.
‘The Leftovers,’ Season Two
The first season of The Leftovers is among the bleakest things ever put on television, and it had an overwrought Max Richter-penned theme song and title sequence to match. Recognizing that they had taken the despair of their quasi-Rapture premise a bit too far, co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta decided to lighten things up ever so slightly, starting out by replacing the orchestral theme with Iris DeMent’s folksy “Let the Mystery Be.” The lyrics hit on many of the show’s key themes, while also preparing viewers to not expect an explanation for the show’s metaphysical premise. And the more chipper and accepting tone of the music ushered in a version of the series that was still incredibly emotional, but not oppressively so. And suddenly, what was hard to watch for many became one of the best shows HBO has ever aired. Some fans, though, like BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, would argue that Leftovers Season One would be just as beloved if it had used the DeMent song. (The final season changed up the theme every week, bringing back both Richter and DeMent in different weeks, but also making unconventional choices like … the Perfect Strangers theme?) —A.S.
‘Pachinko’
The quality of the song itself is an understandably crucial part of what makes for an excellent theme. But often, it’s the alchemical blend of the music and the visuals. The Grass Roots’ “Let’s Live for Today” has the requisite lush sound to match the historical sweep of this adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel about a Korean family caught up in the Japanese occupation. But when it’s paired with a joyous dance-off between the show’s actors — many of whom never interact within the series itself, because they’re playing characters from different eras — the whole thing goes to another level. —A.S.
‘Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?’
“Do it, Rockapella!” With that rousing battle cry, the house band of PBS’s children’s game show — based on the educational video-game series that put players on the trail of a globe-trotting thief in a signature red hat — would launch into an ooo-wop a cappella theme song bubbly enough to be borderline criminal itself. Written by Rockapella co-founder Sean Altman and Broadway composer David Yazbek, it’s a guaranteed trigger of intense Nineties-kid nostalgia. —S.T.C.
‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’
Big band was the dominant sound of theme songs in the Fifties and early Sixties. Others like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners were paired with a static image. This theme (one of several Earle Hagen compositions on the list) has to accompany the main character in action, most memorably the whimsical xylophone riff —Hagen described it as “that little fillip” —that comes when Dick Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie trips over the ottoman. It’s a versatile riff, too, as it works just as well in the alternate version used at times in later seasons where Rob nimbly sidesteps the ottoman and stays on his feet. All around, an expert match of sound and visuals. (Also? Years later, Van Dyke would say that Morey Amsterdam wrote lyrics for it.) —A.S.
‘Green Acres’
Addams Family theme composer Vic Mizzy may have reached his expository peak with this tune, one of several rural-oriented, laugh-track-abetted sitcoms CBS rolled out during the 1960s. (Another was the just as ironic Beverly Hillbillies, with an unforgettable theme song by Paul Henning.) Not only do the Green Acres lyrics explain everything you need to know, they’re sardonic, and they featured the show’s two stars, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, singing in dialogue and in character: “Fresh air/Times Square/You are my wife/Goodbye, city life/Green Acres, we are there!” —M.M.
‘Mad Men’
Mad Men’s pilot barely changed between what Matthew Weiner submitted to AMC and the one that launched the channel’s first venture into prestige TV — but the same can’t be said for the opening theme. According to the notoriously meticulous showrunner, the original credits featured a live-action shot of a businessman walking into his office, opening the window, and jumping out. As Weiner later recalled with a laugh at a Paley Center panel, “AMC [had] a problem with it.” So they went with something more conceptual: an abstract animation of a businessman falling from his window past buildings that were supposed to represent “all of the fears that are inside this man,” according to Weiner, set to a version of instrumental hip-hop crew RJD2’s “A Beautiful Mine” (which Wiener discovered as segue music on NPR’s Marketplace). He loved the classic old-Hollywood feel of the music, which gave the visuals a more cynical spin. “To me, American businessman jumps out a widow, that is a statement,” he said. “It’s part of our iconography.” —E.G.P.
‘WKRP in Cincinnati’
For a rock & roll sitcom about a kooky crew of radio DJs, the obvious move would have been an upbeat party-hearty theme song. (Kinda like the show’s closing-credits banger.) But instead, WKRP had a melancholy ode to the rootless DJ life — “town to town, up and down the dial” — with words by show creator Hugh Wilson. That vibe of adult malaise is what made WKRP so special. This theme song has even more emotional poignance than Les Nessman watching a Thanksgiving turkey drop. —R.S.
‘Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!’
In the summer of 1969, the Archies — a fictional rock band from a Saturday-morning cartoon show — scored a real-life hit single with “Sugar, Sugar.” So it was only natural that the theme song for Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, which premiered that September, might follow a similarly easy-rolling kiddie-rock path, only with a plot outline for a lyric — this was a show about groovy teenagers, similar to Archie and his gang, driving around in a psychedelically painted van solving mysteries. It never became a hit in the vein of the bubblegum tunes it resembled, but it deservedly won decades of Saturday-morning ubiquity. —M.M.
‘Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson’
For nearly 30 years, Johnny Carson entered America’s living rooms to the bounding swing of Doc Severinsen’s Atomic Age horn charts — topped by a long drumroll for Ed McMahon to announce, “Heeeere’s … Johnny!” Carson had inherited Severinsen as a section trumpeter for the orchestra when he took over The Tonight Show in October 1962 (from Jack Paar). “After about a year, the producer of the show came to me [and] said, ‘You know, Johnny wants you to come in and take over the band on the show,’” Severinsen later recalled. “And it was the single biggest break of my life.” —M.M.
‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’
One day, Nerf Herder were a geeky pop-punk band from Santa Barbara; the next, they were the authors of one of the 1990s most indelible instrumental theme songs. Over a quick cut montage of scenes, the song moves from monster-movie organ to full-on rock, sporting an absolutely sick guitar pick slide and climaxing at hardcore-punk speed and bash. The tune embodied the melodramatic feel of the late 1990s: High school might be on a hellmouth, but we’re gonna rock extremely hard murdering these undead allegories for our teenage trauma. —J.G.
‘Moonlighting’
One of the best shows of the 1980s, Moonlighting was an innovative — and, as chronicled by author Susan Faludi in her feminist classic Backlash, combustible — romance centered around Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. Al Jarreau’s memorable smooth-jazz theme serves as the perfect complement. Co-written with Lee Holdrige and produced by Nile Rodgers, he serenades a generation of adults immersed in the quiet storm and landed an unexpected Billboard top 30 hit in the process. “We’ll walk by night/We’ll fly by day/Moonlighting strangers/Who just met on the way,” sings Jarreau. —M.R.
‘Boondocks’
Originally a comic strip by cartoonist Aaron McGruder, Boondocks was one of the 21st century’s classic cartoons for grown folks, featuring pint-size, intellectual Black militant Huey Freeman, who was always ready to educate, and his gangsta younger brother, Riley, who was always ready to throw down, living with their grandfather Robert in the vanilla suburbs. Hip-hop artist Asheru’s theme is note-perfect, crisp Nineties boom bap set to conscious lyrics: “I am the stone that the builder refused/I am the visual, the inspiration that made lady sing the blues.” Everything Huey embodies is here. —J.G.
‘Malcolm in the Middle’
A brilliant kid is stuck in an eccentric family with an overbearing mother, a space-cadet father, and his horrible brothers — of course the theme song is an original by life-long nerd popsters They Might Be Giants. “Boss of Me” is TMBG at their power-pop finest, picking up a picked-on kid’s POV perfectly (“You’re not the boss of me now/And you’re not so big”). It grabbed a Grammy in 2002, the band’s first, for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television, and Other Visual Media. All together now: “Life is unfaaaiiiir.” —J.G.
‘Parks and Recreation’
It was a very tough call between Parks and its creative siblings The Office and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The choice ultimately came down to two things: 1) The optimistic spirit of Gaby Moreno and Vincent Jones’ jaunty folk tune is a much closer match for the tone of Parks than the others are for their respective shows (even if the horns on Brooklyn are fabulous); and 2) The Parks theme inspired that viral video showing how you can sing the phrase “Jabba the Hutt” over the instrumentals. —A.S.
‘Phineas & Ferb’
Few cartoons have incorporated original ditties as cannily as this modern kids’ TV classic (see also the jaw-dropping stylistic range of the show’s brief, brilliant songs), so it’s not surprising that the theme is terrific. A zippy ode to using every moment of summer vacation to do cool stuff, “Today Is Gonna Be a Great Day” was written by show creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh and performed by Bowling for Soup (Bowling songwriter Jaret Reddick added lyrics for a pop-single version and continued to contribute music to the show). It is impossible to hear this and not have a great day (or a decent next hour or so). —J.G.
‘Full House’
There was fierce debate in the Rolling Stone Slack about whether to go with “Everywhere You Look” from Full House or another Jesse Frederick/Bennett Salvay collaboration, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now” from Perfect Strangers. Ultimately, all of the Frederick-Salvay theme songs from ABC’s “TGIF” sitcom block of the late Eighties and early Nineties — see also Family Matters and Step by Step — feel like part of the same musical tapestry, featuring uplifting arrangements and lyrics, the latter of which loosely applied to each show, but which were generic enough on the whole to make each viewer feel good about whatever their family situation was at the time. Frederick also sang many of their themes, including “Everywhere You Look,” though when it was time for the legasequel Fuller House, Carly Rae Jepsen was brought in to cover the familiar tune. —A.S.
‘S.W.A.T.’
The Steve Forrest-Robert Urich vehicle about an unnamed American city’s Special Weapons and Tactics unit only lasted one season. But its theme song, composed by Barry de Vorzon (who also co-wrote “Nadia’s Theme,” the icy piano lament that opened the CBS soap The Young and the Restless) and performed by the Los Angeles funk rockers Rhythm Heritage, was a hit, reaching Number One on the Hot 100 in early 1976 and eventually being sampled by the likes of LL Cool J and 3rd Bass. “Theme From S.W.A.T.” is a fiery instrumental with equal parts funk groove, disco grandiosity, and butt-rock choogle, amalgamating various mid-Seventies aesthetics into a battering ram of a track. —M.J.
‘Dawson’s Creek’
The opening credits for the seminal teen drama were meant to be accompanied by Alanis Morrissette’s “Hand in My Pocket,” and were even edited to match that song (as you can see here). But if Paula Cole’s ballad “I Don’t Want to Wait” doesn’t flow as seamlessly with the visuals, the plaintive emotions in the song were ultimately a better fit for the melodramatic highs and lows of Dawson, Joey, Pacey, Jen, and friends. —A.S.
‘Happy Days’
One of the most indelible sitcom themes in an era chock full of them, “Happy Days” is almost aggressively cheery — Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox’s “Rock Around the Clock” tribute demanded allegiance to the Boomer nostalgia for the Fifties then sweeping the nation thanks to American Graffiti. The show was a ratings sensation after its second season, and the theme became a pop smash; the single (backed with the amazingly named “Crusin’ With the Fonz,”) hit Number Five on the Billboard Hot 100. Given the TV show’s late-Seventies Gen X fanbase, the line “These days are ours” was ironic — the days depicted, in fact, belonged to their parents. —J.G.
‘Peacemaker’
As with Pachinko, the opening to James Gunn’s TV spinoff of John Cena’s meatheaded anti-hero from The Suicide Squad is evidence that having your cast members dance during the opening credits makes any show at least five percent better. In this case, it’s an elaborately choreographed number scored to Norwegian glam-metal band Wig Wam’s “Do Ya Wanna Taste It.” The neon-laden set and the retro vibe of the song help set up the idea that our title character is trapped in a version of the past he’s barely old enough to remember. Plus, it just kicks ass. —A.S.
‘The Wonder Years’
The producers of The Wonder Years had no shortage of Sixties songs they could have picked to bring back memories of the era, but it’s hard to imagine a better choice than Joe co*cker’s rendition of “With a Little Help From My Friends.” It managed to stir up nostalgic feelings for the Beatles, Woodstock, co*cker, and the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour for a generation of Baby Boomers that longed to go back to a more innocent time in their lives. If you want to feel old: A show today that took place two decades in the past would be set in 2002. A theme for that could be Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” or Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” —A.G.
‘Taxi’
When Taxi debuted in the fall of 1978, its theme song was the upbeat title track from jazz-fusion keyboard player Bob James’ 1977 album Touchdown. But early in the first season, they switched things up and went with the more laid-back “Angela,” another James tune from the same album. The tranquilly funky song was the perfect urban-pastorale soundtrack for the daytime cab trip over the Queensboro Bridge in the opening credits. In the late Seventies, New York was usually depicted as a decaying, crime-infested toilet. The Taxi opening’s serene visuals and chill music offered a somber, sweeter, more humbly inviting idea of the city. And that slow ride was symbolic, gliding us toward a brighter future for the Big Apple that turned out to be just around the corner. —J.D.
‘Friday Night Lights’
Austin instrumental rockers Explosions in the Sky composed the score to the 2004 movie Friday Night Lights, with their song “Your Hand in Mine” as the film’s theme. Asked if they would like it to open the TV show, the band declined. (“Boy, did we shoot ourselves in the foot with that one,” said guitarist Munaf Rayani in a 2019 interview with Texas Monthly.) Veteran soundtrack composer W.G. “Snuffy” Walden aped their epic sound and created a catchy, 47-second Explosions soundalike. The song’s emotional sweep, as big as a Lone Star dawn, became the de facto 2000s sound of sports’ struggle, longing, and triumph. (See also the score to Moneyball.) —J.G.
‘The Drew Carey Show’
The Drew Carey Show began with a minimalist opening-credits sequence, with its star crooning ”Moon Over Parma,” Bob McGuire’s ode to love in a Cleveland suburb. It seemed fitting because the show took place in Cleveland, and because it was framed as a kind of no-frills, blue-collar alternative to Friends. Then the series struck a chord with viewers by opening an early episode with a dance number set to ”Five O’Clock World” by the Vogues, and soon a compacted version of that became the new theme song. “Five O’Clock World” ultimately did its job too well, helping make the show successful enough that they were able to send the whole cast to Cleveland to film a much more elaborate new opening, with Drew and company dancing around town to the Presidents of the United States’ cover of Ian Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks.” And somehow a show that would not have seemed a natural music venue at all came to be defined by how it used its theme songs, down to mixing and matching cover versions of all three in later seasons. —A.S.
‘The Odd Couple’
“Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?” Fortunately, not these two. Tony Randall’s uptight Felix and Jack Klugman’s party-animal Oscar spent five years as mismatched roommates on The Odd Couple. The opening credits lay out the backstory: “On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife.” Neil Hefti, Count Basie’s longtime wingman and arranger, composed the jazz theme, a few years after he did the honors for Batman (As he joked, that credit should go, “Word and music by Neil Hefti”). With its tingling harpsichords, it’s a romantic portrait of New York for the not-so-romantic Seventies — especially that surge near the end, in the beautiful moment where Oscar and Felix dance on Sheep Meadow in Central Park. —R.S.
‘The Andy Griffith Show’
The opening credits for The Andy Griffith Show only last about 25 seconds, and that was all it took to enshrine its theme song as some of the most beloved and easily recognized whistling ever recorded. The song was called “The Fishin’ Hole” and the whistle you hear belonged to composer Earle Hagen (who also wrote theme music for The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, and The Mod Squad). In 1961, it was released in two versions on an album called Themes and Laughs From The Andy Griffith Show — one has lyrics, the other is a Stan Kenton-stye jazz number that gives this Edenic evocation of carefree small-town life some urbane West Coast swing. —J.D.
‘Frasier’
The hit Cheers spinoff’s theme song is a double rarity: It plays over the end credits rather than the opening title, and it’s performed by the show’s own leading man, Kelsey Grammer. And, boy, does he ever go for it. “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” is a jazzy little number composed by Bruce Miller, with lyrics by Darryl Phinnessee that playfully reference the show’s radio-show psychiatry premise. (The titular foods are mixed up just like Dr. Crane’s patients, get it?) It’s a perfectly odd choice, enhanced by the variety of versions Grammer recorded, each featuring its own unique vocal vamping. A “Scrambled eggs all over my face, what is a boy to do?” episode was always something to look forward to. —S.T.C.
‘Welcome Back, Kotter’
John Sebastian was a lifelong New Yorker whose band the Lovin’ Spoonful epitomized the Sixties at its most loose, fun and optimistic on hits like “Do You Believe in Magic,” “Daydream,” and “Summer in the City.” He brought that same warm, street-corner-conversation vibe to the song he was asked to write for a new ABC sitcom about a Brooklyn guy who comes back home to his old neighborhood to take a gig teaching at his old high school. His Sweathog serenade “Welcome Back” was so good the producers changed the name of the show from Kotter to Welcome Back, Kotter, and after Sebastian padded out his short demo into a full song, it went to Number One in May 1976. —J.D.
‘Seinfeld’
From the start, Seinfeld didn’t adhere to sitcom convention, so why should its music have done the same? Composer and musician Jonathan Wolff was given an unusual assignment — writing an opener that would accompany but not interfere with Jerry Seinfeld’s opening standup routines. Wolff conceived of Seinfeld’s voice in those bits as a sort of melody, then came up with a smattering of quirky accompanying sounds that conjured finger snapping and the sped-up pace of New York City. “Instead of using drums or other instruments, I used sounds that could go with his human voice and used the pacing of his words to go with his tempo,” Wolff said. Messing with the formula even further, that theme could subtly change with each episode. And that slap bass that lends the Seinfeld theme an added element of charming, jam-band loosey-goosiness? Also unconventional — that’s a synth. —D.B.
‘M*A*S*H’
The late, great director Robert Altman used to grumble that while he barely made any money for his hit movie M*A*S*H or its long-running sitcom adaptation, his son actually made a mint for co-writing (with Johnny Mandel) the song “Suicide Is Painless,” featured prominently in the film and later in the show. None of Mike Altman’s sardonic lyrics made the jump from the big screen to the small, but the instrumental version heard weekly on TV — and then ad infinitum in syndication — does capture the original’s tone, which is equal parts wistful, boisterous, and absurd. —N.M.
‘Lost’
Michael Giacchino wrote hours of outstanding music for this genre-bending drama, with motifs that evoked suspense, adventure, terror, romance, comedy, and mystery. And yet the show’s signature sound remains the 15 seconds of eerie ambient noise — composed by creator and producer J.J. Abrams — which provides the transition out of each episode’s opening sequence. As a blurred, all-caps “LOST” floats and twists against a black backdrop,the disorienting, dissonant tones on the soundtrack put the audience in the place of the castaways on a magical uncharted island, wondering, “Guys, where are we?” —N.M.
‘Diff’rent Strokes’
Years before his son Robin blurred the lines between songwriting and plagiarism, Alan Thicke, along with his then-wife Gloria Loring and co-composer Al Burton, penned this earworm ode to racially mixed families or being yourself or somehow both. The lyrics are both Seventies feel-good vague (“Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum/What might be right for you, may not be right for some”) and economically specific (“A man is born, he’s a man of means/Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans”). Shout out to anyone who thought the last word was “genes.” —J.G.
‘In Living Color’
During its five-season run, In Living Color featured many of the biggest hip-hop acts of the Nineties, including Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, A Tribe Called Quest, and Mary J. Blige. For the theme song, they turned to Heavy D. and the Boyz. They delivered a New Jack Swing-inspired tune about tearing down racial divides, which certainly fit on a show that featured the comedy stylings of both Jamie Foxx and Jim Carey. “And how would you feel knowin’ prejudice was obsolete,” Heavy D raps. “And all mankind danced to the exact beat/And at night it was safe to walk down the street?” —A.G.
‘Match Game’
Every game show needs a theme to set the mood, whether it’s the splashy consumerist hysteria of The Price Is Right or the cerebral tone of Jeopardy! (composed by noted intellectual Merv Griffin). But The Match Game did it better than anyone, with Ken Bichel’s tipsy 1970s synth-funk. Gene Rayburn hosted this bizarre day-drinking bitchfest, with a panel full of flamboyant personalities trading risqué quips: Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers, Richard Dawson, Fannie Flagg, and others. The music captured their zany humor — it was the sonic equivalent of that surreal Day-Glo orange set. More fun than listening to a … blank! —R.S.
