Photo illustration by Matthew Cooley for Rolling Stone. Photographs in illustration by Chris Cuffaio/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images; © 20th Century Fox/Everett Collection; CBS/Getty Images; Virginia Sherwood/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images; The Muppets Studio/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images
It took some time before Game of Thrones became the blockbuster hit of the 2010s, but composer Ramin Djawadi’s iconic theme music made it sound like the biggest thing on television right from the jump. A three-quarter-time swirl of magic and mystery, it perfectly mirrored both the show’s sweeping scope and the clockwork imagery of the title sequence. The song became so firmly identified with GoT’s genre-redefining flavor fantasy that when the time came to select the theme for the prequel series, House of the Dragon, HBO simply used it again. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t shout dracarys at it. —S.T.C.
Look, we were half-tempted to put this right at the top of the list. And it’s not just that once you hear “Too Many Cooks” it will take years of intensive psychotherapy to get it out of your head. It’s also that writer Casper Kelly (co-creator of Adult Swim’s Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell) hangs two irresistible questions on that earworm: (1) What if a TV show consisted entirely of its own theme song? (2)What if that theme song was somehow every theme song, from every genre? So what begins in familiar family-sitcom territory soon becomes a workplace comedy, a gritty cop drama, science fiction, a Saturday-morning cartoon, a slasher movie, and, inevitably, a cooking show. And it just. Keeps. Going. Adult Swim originally aired it at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, yet the short film instantly went viral, because how could something this insane, but also this catchy, not? —A.S.
O.C. creator Josh Schwartz was so determined to fill his teen soap with his favorite indie-rock music that the soundtrack for the first half-dozen episodes is just made up of songs he had on his iPod. Most successful among those is his use of this soaring Phantom Planet ballad. Originally meant to just accompany a montage of the show’s main character arriving in Newport Beach for the first time, it struck such a chord with everyone who saw the pilot that it became the theme song, as well as a crossover radio hit. And it ushered in an era when The O.C., and the shows that followed it, like Grey’s Anatomy, made indie rock a familiar piece of TV’s sonic landscape. And the show wound up making “California” so popular that the estates of Joseph Meyer and B.G. De Sylva sued for a shared songwriting credit and cut of the rights, since Phantom Planet frontman Alex Greenwald and drummer Jason Schwartzman had incorporated a few of the lyrics to Meyer and De Sylva’s Al Jolson hit “California, Here I Come.” —A.S.
The oversize suits. The awkward dancing. The half-singing-along. The claps. Does anything say “Nineties white people” more than the opening of Friends? This poppy Rembrandts song — modeled off R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” — set the tone for the ultra-caffeinated antics of the Central Perk sextet, reminding the viewers the group did truly care about one another, even if they hate Ross for being smart. —E.G.P.
Thanks to decades in syndication since its original early-Nineties run, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s theme song to the classic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is one of a few old-school rap songs that every generation knows the words to. The Philadelphia duo’s track has a strong resemblance to their breakthrough 1988 hit, “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” as the Fresh Prince cheerfully and humorously breaks down his journey from a city playground “where I spend most of days” to his throne in a rich Los Angeles enclave. Check the original song “Yo Home to Bel Air,” which has extra squeaky-clean rhymes that didn’t air on TV. —M.R.
Bernard Herrmann’s screeching strings from Psycho. John Williams’ menacing Oh, no, here it comes theme from Jaws. John Carpenter’s eerie, insistent Halloween hook. These sounds are instantly synonymous with horror, and Maurice Constant’s Twilight Zone theme stands right alongside them. Starting with the show’s second season (replacing the original theme by Herrmann), Constant’s music sounded like a blaring siren, warning you that something terrible is about to befall the legion of legendary actors who populated creator Rod Serling’s macabre morality plays. To this day, it’s the go-to tune to nervously hum to yourself when something really weird has happened and you feel like you’ve entered … —S.T.C.
Fred Rogers did not have a fabulous singing voice. But that’s the whole point of every Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood song, in particular the Rogers-penned “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” So much of the series is about encouraging small children to believe in themselves and go with confidence out into the world. And what better way to convey this idea, episode after episode, season after season, decade after decade, than to welcome viewers in with the sound of Rogers warbling this familiar tune with warmth and complete self-assurance? He’s implicitly telling his young audience that it’s OK to do things you enjoy doing, even if you’re not going to be perfect at them, and he does it while the lyrics are encouraging them to sit a while and bask in his exceedingly kind and gentle presence. Many of the other kids-show themes on this list are more interesting and ambitious musically, but none understand the assignment better than “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” —A.S.
Every episode of this delightful musical-comedy-drama hybrid featured at least two note-perfect song pastiches in a wide variety of styles, from the songwriting team of Rachel Bloom (also the show’s star and co-creator), Adam Schlesinger (a.k.a. the chief songwriter of Fountains of Wayne and the man responsible for “That Thing You Do!”), and Jack Dolgen. The trio brought that chameleonic quality to the theme song as well, which morphed each season to fit a new style and a new phase of the series. Season One’s theme (written just by Bloom and Dolgen) is an expository Broadway-style tune explaining the show’s premise even as it makes fun of the more problematic superficial aspects of it. (“The situation’s a lot more nuanced than that!”) Season Two goes classic Hollywood musical with a Busby Berkeley-ish number, where Bloom’s Rebecca Bunch insists that being in love relieves her of responsibility for her actions. By Season Three, Rebecca is genuinely struggling with mental illness, so the new theme — where Bloom channels, among others, Carrie Underwood and Eminem — confronts that idea more darkly. And as Rebecca starts to get her act together, the final season opens with a TGIF-sitcom parody, with a frequently changing punchline, called “Meet Rebecca!” The story wrapped up perfectly by the end of that season, but it’s hard not to wonder what other theme songs the trio might have crafted before Schlesinger’s tragic death early in the Covid pandemic. —A.S.
After his father’s death, Quincy Jones threw himself into as much work as he could get, from producing records for Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway to continuing his steady diet of TV and movie scores. One of those assignments was a tune for a sitcom about a junk-shop owner and his son in Watts, based on the British sitcom Steptoe and Son. Since he was juggling so many other deadlines, Jones wrote the theme for Sanford and Son (officially known as “The Streetbeater”) in 20 minutes. Then, with the show’s setting in mind, he and his crack studio crew — including keyboardist George Duke, sax players Phil Woods and Ernie Watts, and harmonica player Tommy Morgan — cut a track as scrappy, funky, and lowrider gritty as Fred Sanford’s junk shop. Morgan’s bass harmonica in particular was meant to conjure the throaty rasp of the show’s star, notoriously raunchy comic Redd Foxx. “I just wrote what he looked like,” Jones said. “It sounds just like him, doesn’t it? It was just like Foxx.” —D.B.
A tie between the two all-time great expository themes, with lyrics by creator Sherwood Schwartz. As Schwartz said, “Confused people don’t laugh.” So “The Brady Bunch” and “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” are the platonic ideal of what a theme song should be: catchy tunes that introduce the characters and tell you everything you need to know before watching. A lovely lady, a man named Brady, three girls, three boys — any questions? Seven castaways on an island — we good? That’s the principle behind all of the great premise-explaining cheat-sheet TV themes, from The Beverly Hillbillies and The Odd Couple to Charlie’s Angels and The Six Million Dollar Man. True, Schwartz ducked the question of why Ginger and the Howells packed 98 episodes’ worth of couture for a three-hour tour. But “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” became a 1978 novelty classic; Robert Plant called it his favorite Led Zeppelin cover version. Both of these TV themes epitomize the lost art of here’s-the-story opening credits. —R.S.
Of course the greatest TV theme song of them all would come from the greatest decade by far for TV theme songs. “Movin’ On Up,” co-written by Jeff Barry and Good Times co-star Ja’net DuBois, and belted out with passion and glory by DuBois, does everything you want from a theme song. It tells you what the show is about: Its lyrics touch on the specific move that George and Louise Jefferson have made from a working-class Queens neighborhood to a deluxe apartment in the sky of Manhattan, but also on broader ideas of Black striving and the American dream. It sets the exact mood for the episode that follows, with its raucous tone cueing up the bickering between George, Weezie, Florence, and their neighbors. And most important of all, the song is so exciting — a rat-a-tat gospel number designed to get viewers out of their seats like they’re leaping up from a church pew — that it becomes as much an enticement to tune in as the show itself. Admit it: You’re chair-dancing a little just thinking about it, aren’t you? —A.S.
