What Time is it There? What Time is it There?
May
26
2008

Twitch-O-Meter: When Theme Songs Attack!

Posted by Todd Brown at 9:02am.

Posted in Twitch-O-Meter .

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Ah, the theme tune.  Bad ones are blotted out forever but good ones can hang around forever, always there to pull back memories of whatever it was they were attached to.  The lady-friend suggested doing a Twitch-o-Meter around theme songs which seemed like a great idea not to mention an easy one (which makes it even greater) until we actually started brainstorming ideas and trying to figure out what made a theme song a theme song.  There are lots of movies with instantly memorable music cues – take Psycho or Jaws as prime examples – but those certainly aren’t proper theme tunes so they must be put off for some future list.  Cue versus song is easy enough to differentiate but song versus score is a good bit tougher and as much as I love the music for Star Wars and Indiana Jones that stuff just feels slightly more like score than song to me and so both were arbitrarily dropped and after much unscientific whittling I’ve arrived at what I feel are the Top Five Theme Songs of all time.  Or at least today.

5. James Bond

Oh, crap … one entry in and I’m already cheating, choosing an entire series of films rather than just one.  But hey, I get to make up the rules for this so I can do what I like.  The Bond series has always been unique in that the producers understand the value of a good theme song and have always made the effort to make the title sequence into an event unto itself, the end result being that even with a bad Bond film you can always bank on something interesting happening with the theme.  Some may argue this but for me the Goldfinger theme tops the list of Bond themes with A View To A Kill down at the bottom.  Sorry, Duran Duran, you suck.

It’s all television from here on out …

4. Batman

Ba-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Ba-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, BATMAN!  No big screen Batman here, kids, for theme music it’s the small screen, Adam West Batman all the way.  This used to air on local TV on school lunch breaks and immediately after school, populating my youth with colorful villains, ridiculous heroes and Technicolor camp and this theme song set it all up perfectly.  The theme song for the old animated Spider-Man cartoon wasn’t half bad, either, but for superhero themes Batman is the shit.  Score one for DC.

3. Knight Rider

There was a brief explosion of ‘super’ shows when I was hitting adolescence, a period where network television was populated with shows where the gimmick was the thing more than anything else, and I loved them all.  On the super people side there was Misfits of Science (my personal favorite of the lot), MacGyver, and the short lived Manimal.  But then there were the super vehicles.  Airwolf was my running favorite but I also had a weak spot for Street Hawk - a motorcycle – and the uncontested champ of the genre was Knight Rider.  It’s a patently absurd premise if you stop to think about it but Hasselhoff was exactly the right sort of absurd actor to pull it off and damn if that futuristic theme song didn’t just make it all seem somehow possible.

2. The A-Team

Do I really need to explain the appeal?  It had Mr. T.  It had big guns.  The good guys always won.  And the theme is an absolute classic.  The A Team rave up in Spaced stands as my absolute favorite moment in that entire brilliant series, the combination of Nick Frost and childhood memories making me tear up every time.  Seriously.

1. Doctor Who

Sure, those are all good – great, even – but for the undisputable theme song champion you need to head over the ocean and pay a visit to the BBC.  Is there a more durable and memorable piece of music than the theme to Doctor Who?  It’s just brilliant … short, to the point, and still strange and otherworldly no matter how many times you hear it.  Just fantastic.

There are loads of things out there that could have made this list but didn’t, so have at it!  What bits of film or TV music top your list?

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Reader Comments

  1. n0wak 05/26/2008 @ 11:47am

    I honestly couldn’t tell you how the A-Team and Knight Rider themes go. Couldn’t recognize them if I tried. Never really watched them. Never really watched the old Spider-Man cartoon either, but I know the lyrics to that one pretty much by heart. If anything, that should be on there based on that alone… and the Ramones cover.

  2. Kurt Halfyard 05/26/2008 @ 11:47am

    Before all the browncoats come to the party, I’ll offer up Fireflies western-war ditty.

    And a popular and ‘can’t get it out of my brain’ theme would be from THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO (or heck, even Three’s Company).

    M*A*S*H and Hillstreet Blues come to mind.

    in more recent shows, I like the openings of John From Cincinnati, Big Love, Battlestar Galactica and Weeds.

    And in the film world, there is always HIGHLANDER and FLASH!!!

  3. Kurt Halfyard 05/26/2008 @ 11:48am

    And, uh, Cheers.

  4. Kurt Halfyard 05/26/2008 @ 11:48am

    And er.  A biggie:  THE TWILIGHT ZONE theme is forever remembered!

  5. Geert Jan 05/26/2008 @ 12:33pm

    Don’t forget cheesy classics like that intro song from Baywatch ("Some people staaaay in the darkness...") or the theme from ALF. Ahh, that awkward phase between the 80’s and the 90’s, memories, memories…

  6. Airchinapilot 05/26/2008 @ 1:07pm

    It used to be all about Mike Post for me. That’s because I was learning piano and the only ‘contemporary’ music that my Holocaust-survivor teacher would allow me to play was Mike Post themes. Greatest American Hero, right? All Hill St. Blues. Magnum PI…

    But I also still have in my head:
    INCREDIBLE HULK—the sad .. walking away music at the end. Poor David Banner..
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTs3wsirpNo

    STAR TREK—come ON

    TAXI—melancholy, lovely jazz
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOKsEwEg3cY&feature=related

    ROCKFORD FILES—Great opening. Again Mike Post.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHKjl5Yg4xA

  7. Todd Brown 05/26/2008 @ 1:20pm

    Star Trek almost made it ... it was number six or seven, I think.  But good call on Greatest American Hero, Kurt ... that’s a good one.  Cheers almost made it, too, but I think it’s been devalued for me some since it’s been co-opted for a series of radio ads here ...

  8. wisekwai 05/26/2008 @ 2:02pm

    The Knight Rider theme has gained a lot of traction in recent years because it served as the basis for bhangra-hiphop remixes, to hypnotic effect.

    Chipping in some more TV themes: Mary Tyler Moore, WKRP, Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days. I could go on.

    How about some Mancini: The Pink Panther theme and “The Inspector” theme from Shot in the Dark are hard to get out of my head.

  9. Ard Vijn 05/26/2008 @ 2:51pm

    Heh, totally agree with Todd on the A-team rave segment in Spaced. To me it elevated the series from ‘merely’ very good to absolutely brilliant.

    As for my list of other memorable themes:

    Sandokan
    Shaka Zulu (the single topped our charts here in The Netherlands!)
    (old) Battlestar Galactica
    Magnum P.I.
    The Thunderbirds

  10. Peter K. 05/26/2008 @ 4:08pm

    Maybe its due to my Speed Racer kick, but I love the Speed Racer theme song.

    The Simpsons and Futurama have great theme tracks.

    Then there is Elfman’s incredible Batman theme, which was rearranged for the animated television series.

    I love Queen’s ridiculous Highlander Theme.

    And have a soft spot for the theme song from a criminally underseen british sci-fi animated comedy series called Captain Star.

  11. MikeOutWest 05/26/2008 @ 10:53pm

    A lot of the Gerry Anderson series had good themes - UFO and Space 1999 especially.

    My two favourites though are the themes for Miami Vice (classic Jan Hammer) and NYPD Blue (Mike Post).

  12. Rhythm-X 05/26/2008 @ 11:12pm

    COWBOY BEBOP.  Also COWBOY BEBOP.  Lastly it would be a shame if nobody f***ing mentioned COWBOY BEBOP.

  13. supercrouper 05/27/2008 @ 11:32pm

    One theme song that has been neglected here is the Axel Foley theme for Beverly Hills Cop.

  14. wisekwai 05/27/2008 @ 11:47pm

    Sorry to double-dip here: Now I see Earle Hagen has died at age 88. He wrote thousands of themes for films and television. Among them: Harlem Nocturne, The Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke, Gomer Pyle, Mod Squad, I Spy.

  15. kenshiro7 05/28/2008 @ 4:10am

    Todd Brown, I wholeheartedly agree with your inclusion of The A-Team and Knight Rider scores.  Since you took 2 of my favorites here are 5 more.

    1)Battlestar Galactica Stu Phillips
    2)Buck Rogers In The 25th Century
    3)Thundarr The Barbarian
    4)G.I. Joe A Real American Hero
    5)Gatchaman and the US version...Battle Of The Planets

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