If y'all've always defenseless yourself walking around humming a familiar-but-unidentifiable melody, and and so the infinitesimal y'all put words to it, realized yous were singing the Scooby-Doo theme, this listing is going to resonate. These Television receiver earworms tin can be difficult to shake, simply that'south their job: to get into your caput and stay at that place.

TV themes can innovate y'all to a character (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), an origin story (The Beverly Hillbillies), or just set the mood (The Sopranos). Many of them are written by music vets with long histories of success, either on TV or on the popular charts. Sometimes it's a theme that launches a career, and sometimes information technology represents a fleeting moment in the spotlight. No affair what, Boob tube theme songs tin become indelibly etched onto your subconscious, and almost anybody has not just a favorite, merely also i they wish they'd never heard. We've got both, then here are the parameters we're going to work with.

  1. No instrumentals. That' a whole category all past itself, and deserving of its own listing, which you know if you've ever let the Game of Thrones music play in your head as you get about your business concern. It sure adds drama.
  2. No songs that were out there earlier they were fastened to TV shows. That rules out some large ones, like Smallville, The O.C., Parenthood, and even that annoying, catchy vocal from Enterprise.

That'southward it! We've included some kids' shows in here as well, since they seem especially designed to haunt yous, but left out some of the classics, like The Flintstones and The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Testify. No doubt everyone will have a favorite they think should be here, so get your complaining fingers ready. First, start singing along with the ones we did include in our list of xx Tv set Theme Songs You Nevertheless Can't Exit Of Your Head.

21 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt "Unbreakable" (2015)

Once upon a time, a group of musicians called the Gregory Brothers (consisting of three brothers and i of their wives) thought it would be funny to use Machine-Tune on random news clips, turning interview subjects into singers. They added some greenish screen footage of themselves, played around a fleck, and then put some of the videos on YouTube. Good option: the videos started going viral and racking up millions of views, allowing them all to outset making more than videos as a full time chore. They called their series Songify The News.

Wink forrad. Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, and Jeff Richmond are working on a new prove for Netflix called The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, about a woman who emerges from an underground bunker, where she's lived with a cult for fifteen years. They demand a theme vocal that'll set both the story premise and the tone of the bear witness, and wanted something that sounded similar the Gregory Brothers videos. So they called the Gregory Brothers. Fey and Carlock had already written the monologue for Walter Bankston, the "eyewitness" who saw Kimmy and her friends emerge from the bunker, and allow the group accept it from at that place. They were relieved not to take to spend hours scouring websites for news reports; having a fake i written for them made their job a lot more fun.

Lookout the original version, without the music, to run across what they had to work with.

20 The Partridge Family unit "C'mon Get Happy" (1970)

Come up on now and see everybody / and hear us singin' / Nothing better than being together / when nosotros're singin'

Sound familiar? Non and so much, probably. Here's the one everybody recognizes:

Hullo, earth, here's a song that we're singin' / C'mon get happy / A whole lotta lovin' is what we'll be bringin' / We'll make you happy

We had a dream nosotros'd go trav'lin' together / We'd spread a little lovin' then nosotros'd proceed movin' on / Somethin' e'er happens whenever we're together / Nosotros get a happy feelin' when we're singin' a vocal

This was the Real theme toThe Partridge Family, heard in the 2nd season and forever after. The only cast members singing on it were Shirley Jones and David Cassidy, her existent-life stepson. In fact, they were the just ones allowed to sing on any of the Partridge Family records, fifty-fifty though the whole group was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1971. (The Carpenters won.)

Jones was already a star in her own right, but Cassidy became a superstar because of the serial. He toured the world, selling out stadiums and being literally mobbed by fans wherever he went, then would come home and find women in his car and his home, often naked. Just once a calendar week, even subsequently he'd posed naked on the cover of Rolling Stone, he was clean, cute Keith Patridge, urging viewers to "c'mon get happy" and climb aboard the Mondrian-themed bus with the rest of the gang.

19 Batman "Batman Theme" (1966)

"Word and music by Neil Hefti." That was the description of the theme song by i of the viii singers who recorded it for the 1960s cult TV series Batman, since it featured only one single word, "Batman." Of form that's if y'all don't count "na na na na na na na na ... " as words, which technically, they are not.

It took Hefti, a quondam head of A&R at Reprise and big ring trumpet histrion, almost a month to write the simple-sounding theme, and he said he sweated more than over that than any other piece of music he'd always written. "I was almost going to telephone call them and say, I can't do it. But I never walk out on projects, so I sort of forced myself to stop." The challenge, he felt, was that the show was a comedy, merely its characters were serious. Batman and Robin wouldn't break the law even to save their own lives, and Hefti took their commitment as seriously equally they did, but without the technicolor outfit. And then he struggled for a long time, violent up one endeavour after another, until he finally came up with the song that would become on to be covered by everyone from January and Dean to The Jam. He solved his one-act/drama problem by contrasting a driving rhythm with harmonies and horns, and in doing so, he created a cult archetype.

xviii The Dear Gunkhole "Love Boat" (1977)

Who doesn't think the oh-so croon-y theme vocal to The Love Boat? It promised its weekly guests gamble, romance, and almost of all, beloved, for everybody who boarded the Pacific Princess. Critics hated the show with a passion, merely the ratings soared.

Composer Charles Flim-flam had created dozens of TV and pic themes, as well as the Grammy-winning "Killing Me Softly With His Song." He brought his idea for the Honey Boat theme music to lyricist Paul Williams, a songwriter with a runway record of hits and an ongoing career equally a singer and role player. Williams' first major acting role had been playing Virgil, an orangutan, in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. The year earlier The Love Boat went on the air, he'd had a massive hit with Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen," the theme song to the remake of A Star Is Built-in. Williams looked over the show concept and decided it wouldn't concluding vi weeks. It ran for 10 years.

The theme they created together was sung by Jack Jones for all of The Honey Boat'southward seasons except its final one, when Dionne Warwick's version took over. And despite its unambiguous depiction of love and romance on the high seas, Gavin MacLeod, who played Captain Merril Stubing, would later propose that it could exist reinterpreted to exist a song praising Jesus. Information technology was flexible likewise as memorable.

17 Rawhide "Rawhide" (1959)

This is the oldest song on our listing, and we might not have included it at all were it not for its 1980 resurrection by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Rawhide, a show about a group of cattle drivers in the 1860s, premiered in 1959, and ran for eight seasons. Today, it's best known as the show that launched Clint Eastwood'southward career.

The theme song was written past composer Dimitri Tiomkin and songwriter Ned Washington, and sung by Frankie Laine. Information technology popularized the term "hell bent for leather," and managed to have a life long afterward the testify information technology was created for. Information technology'due south been covered by a diverse range of artists, including Liza Minelli, The Jackson 5, and Oingo Boingo, but it was its appearance in The Blues Brothers Movie and its accompanying soundtrack that put it back into the spotlight. In a moving picture full of great songs, information technology holds its own.

The songwriters knew their stuff. Both had long careers and won a number of Oscars for their songs. Washington wrote classics similar "Boondocks Without Pity," "My Foolish Heart," "When You Wish Upon a Star," and "The Nearness Of You," and Tiomkin had created music for dozens of westerns. Frankie Laine would later sing the theme to Mel Brooks' movie Blazing Saddles, a parody of archetype westerns, complete with whipcracks. He sang information technology with such sincerity and center that Brooks was certain he didn't know the movie was a comedy, and when Brooks saw the tears in his eyes, he didn't take the heart to tell him.

16 Welcome Back, Kotter "Welcome Back" (1975)

Back in the 1970s, producer Alan Sacks was looking for a theme song for a new show called Kotter, starring Gabe Kaplan, about a guy who returned to his neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to teach the type of slacker loftier school kid that he once used to be. The evidence would launch the career of John Travolta, and create a new set up of high school archetypes for a generation of TV viewers.

Sachs needed a theme song, and what he wanted was something that had a Lovin' Spoonful blazon of audio. He was lucky; his agent also represented Lovin' Spoonful's founder, John Sebastian. Then Sachs asked Sebastian to  create something, and what he got was "Welcome Back." Sachs liked it so much that he changed the name of the prove to Welcome Dorsum, Kotter to match it. Initially, Sebastian simply wrote ane poetry, simply later added in more along with a harmonica solo, and released it as a unmarried, with early pressings titled "Welcome Dorsum Kotter" simply and then record-buyers would know it was the vocal from the hit show. It spent a week in the number 1 spot on Billboard'south Acme 100, selling over a million copies. (It fifty-fifty made it to #93 on the Country chart.)

Decades afterwards the show was off the air, the song still resonated. Information technology'south been sampled by Onyx in "Slam Harder" and by Lupe Fiasco in "Welcome Back Chilly." And when Mase released his first anthology later on a five yr break, he sampled it in a vocal called, of form, "Welcome Back."

15 Phineas and Ferb  "Today Is Gonna Be A Nifty Day" (2007)

Yous don't need to be a child to appreciate the joys of Phineas and Ferb. Every calendar week brought inventive stories, unforgettable characters, running jokes with taglines that never got quondam, and a steady stream of tricky songs.  The theme song was performed by Bowling For Soup, who also co-wrote it. The show'due south creators, Dan Povenmire and Swampy Marsh, were fans of the ring and asked lead vocalizer Jaret Reddick to take the snippet they'd already started and create a theme out of it, along with a iii and a half minute version for radio. Reddick watched a couple of rough cuts of the show, and wrote the vocal the next 24-hour interval ... and scored an Emmy nomination for his efforts. Bully for a song that only took him twenty minutes to write.

The ring has appeared on the blithe  bear witness as themselves, and contributed other songs, as well equally updating the lyrics of the theme song periodically for specials and holidays. Reddick also played the recurring role of Danny, the lead singer of fictional band Honey Händel. They performed in multiple episodes, most memorably to gloat the anniversary of Phineas' female parent and Ferb's father with a live operation of their '80s hit, "You Snuck Your Style Correct Into My Centre."

14 The Jeffersons "Movin' On Upwards" (1975)

The Jeffersons was a spinoff of All In The Family, and took George and Louise Jefferson out of the Bunkers' Queens neighborhood and on to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, thanks to George's success as a businessman. The theme vocal, "Movin' On Upwardly," reflected the joy of the motility with an infectious beat and a sense of celebration.

Information technology was written past Jeff Barry and Ja'cyberspace Dubois. Barry was known for writing a cord of pop hits with partner Ellie Greenwich; their work with Phil Spector helped ascertain the "girl group" sound of the 1960s.  Dubois, who as well provided the lead song, was already well known to TV viewers as Willona on Good Times, another spinoff (of a spinoff) of All In The Family.

The song has become something of an anthem. It was covered by Sammy Davis Jr. in 1978, sampled by Nelly in "Batter Up," and often gets played at sporting events when a team that's been in a slump makes a comeback. Ludacris once told Rolling Stone that The Jeffersons was "every black person's favorite Television theme, considering nosotros movin' on up." The song, more than the prove, however resonates.

As proof of its place in American culture, President Barack Obama toured New Orleans on the 10th ceremony of Hurricane Katrina, and met a adult female named Wheezy, he sang her the opening lines of the vocal, to her delight.

13 Hannah Montana "The Best of Both Worlds" (2006)

Earlier she twerked, before she rode a wrecking ball naked, earlier she smoked pot on stage at an awards prove, Miley Cyrus was a sweet 13 twelvemonth-old starring in a smash TV series called Hannah Montana. She auditioned to play 1 of Hannah's friends, but was asked to try out for the lead, then told she was too young for the part. But when the producers realized she could sing, they gave her the starring role anyway and she instantly became a teen idol.

She sang the show's theme song herself. It was written by Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil, and was one of only two Television theme songs in that decade to nautical chart on Billboard's pinnacle 100. (The other was the theme from iCarly, sung past Miranda Cosgrove.) When Cyrus was on tour, she'd dress up as Hannah to perform the song, but then years afterwards, regretted some of the effects of her superstardom, in terms of both its effect on her as a teen growing up in forepart of an audition, and on other teenage girls watching information technology. While she was singing "Best of Both Worlds" to packed concert halls and stadiums, she was full of feet and cocky-doubt.

Since then, she's taken command of her own image and career. She started out as a teen idol and so became a magnet for scandal and criticism, simply appreciation for her journey and her talent has come from some unexpected places. Woody Allen has cast her in the TV series he'southward doing for Amazon, and her godmother, Dolly Parton, is a staunch Miley supporter, remembering how she used to become criticism for her own sexy wardrobe choices. About Cyrus, she said,"And so I did go through that, just I don't give her advice. Everyone has to walk this journey according to their own rules. That'south what she'south doing. And I lurve her."

12 The Brady Bunch "The Brady Agglomeration" (1969)

Written by prove creator Sherwood Schwartz and veteran composer/arranger (and actor) Frank De Vol, the theme for The Brady Bunch was originally sung by a slightly obscure ring chosen The Peppermint Trolley Company. By flavour ii of the show, the producers got smart and decided they'd exist better off having the actual cast sing the song. (Interestingly, the Brady kids did a lot more real singing on their evidence than the Partridges, who were actually playing a singing grouping.)

All six Brady kids sang the theme together for the 2nd season, but when the third one rolled around, they switched things up, and had the boys sing the first verse nigh the girls, the girls sang the 2d poesy about the boys, and and so they joined upwards together for the stop. For a evidence most a blended family, this fabricated perfect sense. Decades later, there are multiple generations who yet remember every discussion.

For a different take on this squeaky-clean song from a squeaky-clean show, bank check out Jamie Foxx's version, which he says he would sing to prospective dates.

11 The Greatest American Hero "Believe Information technology or Not" (1981)

Everyone knows this song, and yet not everybody knows where it's from, probably considering the prove information technology was from was just on the air for ii measly seasons. "Believe It Or Not", written by Mike Post and Stephen Geyer, spent 26 weeks on the Hot 100, peaking at #2 because "Endless Love" wouldn't get out of the way.

The show was The Greatest American Hero, and its shaky premise was that a school teacher (William Katt) met some aliens who gave him superpowers when he wore a special (and pretty dopey) superhero adapt. He lost the instruction transmission, and comedy ensued every bit he learned exactly what special abilities information technology gave him. Example: It made him fly, simply didn't teach him how to land smoothly. Wacka-wacka!

"Believe It Or Non" was also a pretty light-headed song, every bit well as a boom hit. It was sung past Joe Scarbury, who only ever released one album his whole life, back in 1981. Just the song lived on. It was used in the picture The 40 Twelvemonth-Old Virgin, triggering disruptive memories for thousands who couldn't place it, and Michael Moore put it in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/eleven for a montage about how the popular vote went to Al Gore in 2000, with the telling line, "Suddenly I'm on top of the world / Information technology should have been somebody else …"

But the all-time cover? Information technology'southward a toss-up between its memorable high-speed version seen on Gilmore Girls, with Sebastian Bach on vocals (and Melissa McCarthy's line, "I judge it sounds different live"), and the adaptation done by George Costanza on Seinfeld, as the outgoing message on his answering machine. And if you're in doubt that the vocal is really a cult classic, look to its lyric writer, who supervised the songwriting staff on some other short-lived cult classic, Cop Rock .

x Family Guy "Family unit Guy Theme Vocal" (1999)

When Seth MacFarlane created Family Guy, he had a hard time convincing the Fox network to let him include an opening theme song. Theme songs for shows are part of a tradition that'due south been disappearing over time, equally networks worry more and more nearly keeping the audience's attention. But MacFarlane pushed for it. "I recall what [executives] don't realize is, showmanship is showmanship." he told NPR. "Information technology hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It's a drum roll saying, 'Hither comes a show.' ... And it gets the audience psyched up."."

One time he won the boxing, he got composer Walter Irish potato to write the music for his showstopping opening sequence. Tater had had an oddball #one hit in in the mid 1970s with his disco adaptation of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which found its mode onto the fifteen-times-platimum Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The two combined their efforts along with producer David Zuckerman to create a memorable, fun-to-sing-forth-with opening vocal.

Part tribute to the music McFarlane grew up on, and part parody of the archetype open to All In The Family, the dance sequence is matched in exuberance by the music that accompanies it. They recorded various versions in different seasons to accommodate irresolute bandage members, and MacFarlane says he re-did his ain song rails to more clearly verbalize "laugh and cry," since then many people thought it was "f'due north cry".

The song'south popularity fabricated it easier when MacFarlane was developing American Dad, and effortless when he created The Cleveland Show. "I recall by that point, they realized it was a stylistic thing for these shows — that you need a little bit of a drum roll. Y'all need a lilliputian bit of a P.T. Barnum intro." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

nine Sesame Street "Tin can You Tell Me How To Go To Sesame Street" (1969)

Who doesn't hear those offset few notes and become transported back to their babyhood? "Tin can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street" is some of the first music many of the states were exposed to as nosotros watched Sesame Street, learned our letters and numbers, and heavily identified with the Cookie Monster. The prove was e'er filled with peachy music, merely its theme is the oldest song in its history, premiering along with the offset episode on November 10, 1969.

The music was written by Joe Raposo, who was also the artistic force behind "C is for Cookie" and "Bein' Green." The lyrics came from Raposo, Jon Stone, and Bruce Hart. The original version featured harmonica by renowned jazz musician Toots Thielemans and a children'south choir. At that place was some variation on the lyrics: sometimes it opened with "Come and play …" and other times information technology was "Sunny day …" but the melody remained the same. It got jazzier, briefly, in 1988, when Gladys Knight and the Pips sang it on a pledge-drive event called The Sesame Street Special, with kids, bandage members, and muppets dancing all around them.

The song  has been updated over the years, merely no matter what changes, its inspiration ever comes from the original past Joe Raposo. In 2016, it got a make new arrangement for its 46th season and its move to HBO.

P.S. All the kids in that opening sequence? They're all in their 50s now, at least. Probably their 60s.

8 The Big Blindside Theory "The History of Everything" (2007)

This is maybe the best theme song story of the agglomeration.

Barenaked Ladies lead singer Ed Robertson got inspired after reading a book by Simon Singh chosen "Big Bang: The Almost Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why Y'all Demand to Know About It." And so in true Barenaked Ladies form, he improvised a song about cosmological theory during one of their shows in 50.A. Sitting in the audience that night were Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, who were developing a evidence called The Large Bang Theory about some geeky geniuses and their friends. At that moment, they two producers decided that they had to get the Barenaked Ladies to create the theme song.

When they first approached Robertson, he was hesitant and wanted to know who else they were asking. Jack Johnson? Counting Crows? He did not want to spend time writing a theme only to find out that there were others doing the aforementioned matter at the same time. But they reassured him that he was the only one they speaking to.

Their assignment? Create a song that encompassed everything that's happened since the beginning of time up to the present in 15 seconds. Robertson did an acoustic demo, but when they wanted to go on it, he insisted that they record it with the entire grouping. Fortunately, Lorre and Prady liked the new version even more than. The rest, along with everything the song describes in 24 seconds, is history.

7 The Mary Tyler Moore Show "Love Is All Effectually" (1970)

If in that location was always a theme song that captured the spirit of its opening montage, it'south the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Entertainment Weekly called the scene at the stop where Mary tosses her lid into the air the 2d greatest moment in the history of television for a reason: information technology ready the whole tone of the show. "Wasn't it great?" Mary Tyler Moore said. "Liberty, exuberance, spontaneity, joy — all in that one gesture. Information technology gave a hint at what you were going to see."

The song that went with it was written and performed by Sonny Curtis. He got a call at home at eleven:00 a.m.  one 24-hour interval asking if he was interested in writing a song for a new sitcom starring Mary Tyler Moore.  Someone dropped off a clarification of the show an 60 minutes later, merely a basic outline of the premise. Past 2:00, Curtis had a verse set up and asked his friend who he was supposed to sing it to. He was sent over to run into James L. Brooks, the prove'southward co-creator.

Brooks wasn't thrilled to run across him. He was busy, and wasn't set up to starting time thinking most a theme song, just since Curtis was already there, he listened. And then he picked up the phone—the one in the room, there were no prison cell phones of course—and started making calls to go people to come hear it. By the time he was done, the room was total of appreciative listeners who agreed with Brooks that they'd plant their theme.

Brooks was heading to Minneapolis that weekend to shoot the show's opening sequence, and wanted the song with him, so he sent out for a tape recorder and Curtis, notwithstanding game, sing it for the tenth time that twenty-four hour period. When information technology came fourth dimension to do the official version, Curtis told them they couldn't have the song if he didn't get to sing information technology, and they wanted it badly, and then they hired him. He inverse the lyrics in flavor two to reflect Mary'south newfound independence, and the song kicked off every episode of the show for seven seasons, and forever onward in syndication.

vi Malcolm in the Middle "Boss of Me" (2000)

Malcolm in the Middle's creator, Linwood Boomer, was looking for a theme song for his new show, he picked up the phone and called They Might Be Giants. The ring, the abstraction of John Flansburgh and John Linnell , had been making music for years, simply was starting to make their mark in the soundtrack world too. Boomer gave Flansburgh a call, and got his married woman, who instantly recognized the name: Boomer had played Adam Kendall (Mary Ingalls' husband),  on Little House on the Prairie,and how many Linwood Boomers could in that location be? Just the one, information technology turned out.

Boomer had a very clear idea of what he was looking for in a theme song, something loftier energy that would capture the feeling of a house full of out-of-control brothers. TMBG e'er had a stack of one-half-finished songs around, so they grabbed one that felt right and tailored the residual to fit the bear witness. The final production became the first TV theme ever to win a Grammy for All-time Vocal Written for a Movie or Idiot box Show. Information technology was the first Grammy for the band, too.

5 four. Laverne & Shirley "Making Our Dreams Come Truthful" (1976)

"Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer incorporated!"

While the memorable theme song "Making Our Dreams Come True" was written by Tv set theme testify vets Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, the opening rhyme that Laverne and Shirley recited every bit they skipped down the street arm-in-arm was actually a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant star Penny Marshall remembered from her childhood. "Penny, teach Cindy, 'Sclemeel, schlimazel," her brother Garry—producer and creator of the evidence—told her, and thus it was likewise learned by millions of others.

The song itself followed. Fox and Gimbel didn't know much about the show when they put it together, only that the 2 primary characters were blue collar women who worked in a brewery in Milwaukee, and had big dreams. Their initial stab at it was a song called "Hoping Our Dreams Will Come Truthful," but the producers felt that it didn't capture the strength and determination of the title characters. They went back to the drawing lath with that in listen and came back with with "Making Our Dreams Come True," which better reflected the tone of the evidence.

The song was put out every bit a single in 1976, the simply hit for singer Cyndi Grecco, and information technology remains catchy as always. Last yr, some backside-the-scenes footage captured American Idol judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr. spontaneously singing it together, with Lopez getting the words right effortlessly and Urban confessing afterward that he watched too much TV as a kid. (Is there such a affair?)

4 Pokémon "Pokémon Theme" (1998)

When Jason Paige commencement sang the demo for the Pokémon theme vocal, all he knew nearly the show was that information technology had caused a bout of epileptic seizures in Nihon. He certainly didn't expect the song to go and so popular that information technology would exist used, remembered, and sung most 2 decades later. It's tagline, "Gotta catch 'em all," is one that provides instant flashbacks to their childhood for almost anyone who grew up in that era.

Seven months after the show premiered in the U.s., there were at to the lowest degree 40 licensing deals in place for related products, pulling in over 200 million dollars in acquirement. To jump on the turn a profit bandwagon, an album was recorded, featuring a full-length version of the vocal, written by John Siegler and John Loeffler, both skilful jingle writers. Information technology went platinum inside four months. While Siegler and Loeffler made jumbo amounts of money, Paige, who'd performed on multiple tracks, got a apartment fee for his vocals and spent years suing to effort to get a slice of the Pokémon pie. He eventually had some success, only it was zippo compared to what the song he was singing raked in for the company that owned it.

With the inflow of Pokémon Get, the vocal jumped in popularity again. The game was launched on July 6th, and past the 14th, it had sold 7000 downloads, up 1079% from the previous week. "Gotta take hold of 'em all" is as relevant today as it e'er was.

3 Friends "I'll Be There For You" (1994)

How many people does it take to make a theme song? At that place were six in the bandage of the striking show Friends, and it took seven to create the theme song for information technology. Within iii days, they wrote and recorded it, a combination effort of the show'due south executive producers, and Phil Solem and Danny Wilde of the Rembrandts.  With an opening riff heavily influenced past The Beatles' "I Feel Fine," the song they created lasted a minute, the perfect length to introduce a Television receiver prove.

But information technology didn't end in that location. The song became popular, so pop that some DJs at a Nashville radio station decided to loop information technology together three times and play it on the air … over and over once more. They started getting requests for it after that, and when that caught on, the tape label went back to the Rembrandts and insisted that they mankind information technology out into a proper iii-infinitesimal pop song.

The next task was creating a full-length music video. They spent iii days shooting it on the Sat Nighttime Live stage, with the band and all six cast members.  The original concept required the cast to hit the Rembrandts with a fish to get rid of them, but the cast rapidly nixed the fish programme. They didn't need information technology. The video was every bit much of a hit equally the vocal, playing on networks like VH1 in heavy rotation.

Blender magazine may have called it the 15th worst song always, on a list of 50, simply it topped multiple Billboard charts and peaked at the Hot 100 at #17.  It was the biggest hitting the band ever had by a long shot.  Years later, Solem and Wilde would perform it in NYC at the Central Perk pop-up store, joined on stage past James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther on Friends every bit, of course, a guy who worked at the coffee shop.

2 Thanks "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (1982)

In 2011, a Rolling Rock Readers Poll declared "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" as the best Tv set theme song of all time. In 2013, TV Guide made the aforementioned proclamation. Merely this incredibly popular vocal had a particularly rocky start.

Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart had written a song together for a musical called "Preppies Similar Us," and a friend of theirs brought information technology to Cheers producers Glen and Les Charles. They wanted to use it for the show, but it was already spoken for, so they asked the songwriters to come up with something else.  Their first 3 attempts were rejected, simply when the quaternary one came in, the producers started to like what they heard. The music was correct, only at present the lyrics needed work.

Singing the blues when the Ruby-red Sox lose Information technology'southward a crunch in your life On the run 'cause all your girlfriends Want to exist your married woman And the laundry ticket'southward in the wash

As well gloomy? That was the consensus. It was also too specific.

They took another crack at information technology, and came up with this:

Making your fashion in the world todayTakes everything you've gotTaking a break from all your worriesSure would help a lotWouldn't you like to become away?

They had it. Portnoy sang the song, with a minimal musical organization that featured him on piano and vocals along with a pulsate, guitar, and bass. A clarinet was added later. The total version of the song did retain some of the bleaker vocals, even so, only Cheers  fans didn't hear it until it was played over a montage in the show's 200th episode. The lyrics are a footling bizarre, probably reflective of the idea that the show is about a bunch of people who hang out in a bar all the time. Go see a lyric video hither to see what nosotros mean.

i Honorable Mentions

Anybody is going to to name songs that aren't on this list, and possibly even mutter that they should've been included alee of the ones that fabricated information technology. Then hither, in no particular order, are a few honorable mentions for Telly theme songs we didn't get to, that y'all can't get out of your head no matter how difficult yous attempt.

WKRP in Cincinnati: This ane seems to evoke an emotional reaction in people who think information technology. One of those songs that explained the show premise, information technology tells the story of radio program director Andy Travis, who'due south starting fresh in Cincinnati after a intermission-up and, we think, a career that hasn't quite measured up to what he expected.

Dukes of Hazzard "Good Ol' Boys": When you get Waylon Jennings to sing your theme vocal, people remember information technology.

Liv and Maddie "Improve in Stereo": Enquire any parent of an aspiring tween if they know this one. Better yet, merely commencement humming it until they first screaming.

The Monkees: Hey hey, we're the Monkees! Still spinning on oldies radio stations.

Spiderman: The one from the 1960s cartoon. One listen, and you're doomed.

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