SONN takes on the thankless task of identifying the Best TV Theme Song evah. Thankless in that the corpus is so huge, and the associations between given tunes and their shows (and the title sequences themselves) is so tight, that it’s exceedingly difficult to come up with a “best.”
That said, just thinking of “classic” TV (which then includes current faves like “Firefly”), I can’t argue too much with his first choice of “Hawaii Five-O,” though I’d likely give the nod to “Mission: Impossible.” Or, maybe the oiriginal “Jonny Quest.” “Doctor Who,” perhaps. Even “Maverick.”
But, damn, I’ve got a ton of TV show MP3s I could point at, not to mention audio and video tapes of main title sequences I love, and I know I’m forgetting eleventy-dozen I like even better than those.
The flip side to the discussion, the Worst TV Theme Song, the nominees are even more endless, and though I don’t fear leaving out something I love, I find it hard to actually force myself to think of them.
So … what are your nominees (in either category)?
Posted by Dave-o-Tron.
Since the original post referenced put the list in a ‘top 10’ format, I’ll do the same with my own picks, though I freely admit that most of them won’t be terribly original.
10. “The Mission”/NBC Nightly News theme
Head to this site (http://www.geocities.com/netnewsmusic/nbc.html) if you can’t recall the NBC Nightly News theme – I prefer the older orchestral version to the more recent, more martial version of the theme.
9. The Twilight Zone
Minimalist and scary, with one of the best voice-over narrations in TV history. (“You unlock this door with the key of imagination.”)
8. The Superfriends
Great orchestral theme, and the highlight of my youthful Saturday mornings.
7. Star Trek: the Next Generation
Yes, I know it’s just the movie theme slightly tweaked for TV, but it works. (See also the comment on the Firefly theme below.)
6. The Incredible Hulk – end title theme
As close as you get to hearing despair on network television.
5. Animaniacs
Very good in its own right, yet in another light just an homage to #2 on this list, right down to the rotating penultimate line gag.
4. The Rockford Files
It took me a long time to realize that I liked the theme much more than I liked the actual show, there at the end.
3. theme from ABC’s Monday Night Football
Another link in case you don’t remember the theme (http://www.80stvthemes.com/potpourri/sports.html); even today, this is still *the* American football theme music. (The Wide World of Sports theme on the same page linked above is pretty danged good, too, though it loses a bit without the Jim McKay voice-over narration. “Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of sport.”)
2. The Muppet Show
*The* classic “let’s start the show” theme.
1. Mission: Impossible
My disappointment with the movies over the TV show can be summed up with a simple musical experiment. Think of the TV theme, and start counting beats: while there are four notes, you should come up with five (syncopated) beats to the measure. (ONE-and-two-AND-three-and-FOUR-and-FIVE-and)
While you have six notes in the movie theme, you’ll discover that they fall into a much less interesting (though still syncopated) four beats to the measure. (ONE-e-and-A-two-e-AND-a-three-E-and-a-FOUR-e-AND-a)
The difference between the TV theme and the movie theme is that between a theme that grabs you with its energy and one that wants to impress you with its technique. Not really a fair fight, but there you have it.
Honorable Mention: Underdog
Given the Enron headlines, it’s worth a re-listen to this classic cartoon theme. (http://www.melaman2.com/cartoons/singles/mp3/underdog.mp3)
Regarding “Firefly”, while I wouldn’t go so far as to put it into the category of worst TV theme songs (there are folks I know who’d have my innards for even suggesting such a thing), I do think the use of that theme helped doom the TV series – what Whedon should have looked for was something suggesting the quirky action-themed spirit of the series. instead, he went with something that sounded as though it was introducing “The Grapes of Wrath in Space”. If Whedon ever gets a chance to revisit the Firefly universe on TV (and I hope he does), he should take a page out of Star Trek’s book and adapt one of the movie themes (maybe the ‘Spaceball’, ‘Cows’, or ‘Reavers Chase Serenity’ themes) as the new TV theme.
Full props to Pete VonderHarr, whose original TV theme post (from January of 2005, no less) was a big inspiration. (http://www.whiterose.org/pete/blog/archives/007389.html)