I went in thinking I would vote WKRP; I used to watch it occasionally. But the song is pretty bad–bland 70s cheese with no real connection to the show. It’s offensive in its inoffensiveness. So the Persuaders won, almost by default.
The Batman/Boondocks was the toughest for me. The Batman theme is “iconic” and more familiar to me but I’m not sure it was because of the theme itself, or the show. I never saw Boondocks but I read the strip a little, and the song seems to fit. So I went Boondocks.
Had to go with the song from the show with the racist car, it fits that show well. The Price Is Right theme could have been to another game show and nobody would notice or care.
Succession vs Bev. Hillbillies was also tough. I never saw Succession but the theme seems to capture the vibe as I understand it, and the song is polished and has some character. The BH theme is an “explain the show” theme and the banjo hooks are done well. I went Succession but it was close.
I like this idea of justifying picks, so I’ll do the same now. As for you, eyebooger, you are missing out on a lot of great TV that I’m fairly sure you would like. You’re maybe slightly too young for the nostalgia aspect of Stranger Things but season 1 is amazing for me being roughly the same age as the children in the era depicted in the show. A lot of you are missing out. I wasn’t into a lot of the stuff they were but it lands really well with me. It took me a long time to get on the train, but I watched season 1 twice and it had the same impact on both watches.
On to the justifications:
Stranger Things theme crushes the NFL theme for me. The construction of the song, the difficulty level with how it was created, and how it fits and brings in nostalgia along with it being appropriate for the show all give it an A+ grade for me. NFL on FOX is one of the worst major sports themes, so it’s a hard pass for me.
I vaguely remember The Persuaders hitting my view at some point, but never watched an episode. I have no idea where I would see it but it might have been old Nick at Nite or very late night MeTV. WKRP is no doubt an iconic theme, but I absolutely hate its elevator pop music. That show was really good with music in the show (lots of rights issues in later years) but the theme does not match the tone of the show at all, which takes it down major in points. WKRP is the journey of Andy Travis, an extremely boring character who the theme works for, just not on the show. The Persuaders is a cool theme and easily beats WKRP for me.
Context helps me get Batman TAS over the finish line. When that series came out, Batman was close to a dead property (done a lot of work retrospectively for this show). What Bruce Timm and company did with the animation saved that character and produced our chance at the dark Batmans we’ve been seeing since that Nolan did great with. Its theme is a driving factor for that, making it iconic. I didn’t re-listen to the X-Files theme because I know it fairly well. It’s good for the show, iconic in nature, but it’s bland and boring. In a competition between it and Stranger Things, it’s not even close but is winning here and Stranger Things is losing, cuz why?
ABC had really cheesy theme songs y’all. The words are all great for every song, but the music is omg cheesy. Gilligan’s Island (did work retrospectively for this show too, and wow did Sherwood Schwartz screw this cast) is a show I watched every morning before school through high school and is another great background TV watch. It is one of the best theme songs in TV history that explains everything. For those who don’t remember, the first season had The Professor and Mary Ann as ‘and the rest’. Thankfully, they corrected that hilarious mistake in future seasons. Lyrically, the songs are close but Gilligan’s Island absolutely crushes the Family Matters theme musically. It fits perfect for an island show as well. I think we’ll all have a lot of nostalgia picks in here, but I wish there were some more objective evaluations of some of the songs that maybe don’t land for you. I’m trying to do that even when it’s difficult.
Batman vs. Boondocks was tough for me. The Batman theme is obviously iconic and memorable, but it’s nothing. It’s the equivalent of Liberty Liberty Liberty…Liberty. That took 5 minutes to compose. But it’s memorable. So what? Boondocks has a great track and the words work. I’ve never seen the show, so have no idea how well it fits, but that reasoning easily pushes it over the finish line for me.
TPIR is an all-timer game show theme, but there are a lot of game show themes that are better and hardly any of them if any got in. The original Dukes of Hazzard theme song that Waylon Jennings sings slowly and deeply is an iconic theme song, the version posted here is garbage. I grew up in Texas hating country music but I did not mind that song. I think I was 7 or 8 years old when this show first aired and remember wishing Catherine Bach was my mom lol. Dukes of Hazzard has many problematic elements, the car obviously being the biggest, but even with it not holding up to time and feeling gross, it beats TPIR for me.
I would watch Hey Dude, Salute Your Shorts, etc. before my radio show in college, while I was prepping my shows. I couldn’t remember the theme, but that is pure cheeseball. The L&O theme is also pure Mike Post cheeseball. A guy who actually did have some cool music in the time roughly of The Rockford Files early airing. That’s very hard to believe since he’s pure cheeseball now. Still, Mike Post cheeseball L&O crushes Hey Dude.
I seriously am disappointed that Succession is likely to take down the number 2 of all time TV theme song, The Beverly Hillbillies. I love Nicolas Britell and did some really cool stuff for Moonlight involving him. Succession’s theme is memorable and fun and one I wouldn’t skip week to week when watching the show if my wife didn’t force me to. That said, it’s very repetitive and doesn’t do much. Does it fit the show? Sure. Does it add to the show? No. Again, I was a Texan growing up hating country music and I watched The Beverly Hillbillies every day before school all the way through high school and I could probably still watch the show today, though I haven’t in at least a decade. It’s great background TV. I absolutely love that theme song and it does what all theme songs of this era are supposed to do, tell you the story of the show quickly and concisely in a nice package. Musically, it is A+ and I love the ending theme too. I hope my justification can get people to change some votes, because it is a travesty that Succession will take this round if it does.
Probably main team (don’t really have one) is AFC.
My stance is the theme is good, but the way it was produced is bad. It’s kind of like how modernizing the Monday Night Football theme from the original Heavy Action theme (the string build in the original Heavy Action is one of my favorite sounds ever for sports) really elevated that theme with a big orchestra, though they didn’t really capture the feel perfectly of what really works in the vamp of Heavy Action, because it should go from small to big better. If the current version was played by The Love Unlimited Orchestra (Barry White’s orchestra), I think it would be a perfect melding of the two versions but ESPN went BIG and it works better than any other football theme by 2 zillion miles. With a big real orchestra, the NFL on FOX theme would be awesome. It’s not that, so the layers of cheese in fake horns and strings hurt it a lot of for me.
As a side note, I do work for Amazon Thursday Night Football now and its theme isn’t bad. It’s composed well but it probably will not ever get to iconic status. It seemed like they were going for something kind of in between the Monday Night Football and FOX theme. His instrumentation is good, but he doesn’t quite get the notes there. I expect that to change over time into something better.
Also, by being in the common meter, it can function as a tune to which to sing a huge number of things. I’m not sure exactly how many themes in this bracket are also, but Pokemon is at least one.
CBS has long insisted on throwing really annoying lead color commentators at us. You don’t get to flog us with a decade of Phil Simms before, err, upgrading to Tony Romo, and then claim to be the gold standard.
Not even trying to pretend someone like Troy Aikman is great, but I also won’t abide any false equivalency that he’s on that Simms/Romo level.
I cannot stand Joe Buck/Troy Aikman as commentators and would almost always watch them on mute. I wanted to create a ‘Tickle Me Aikman’ doll based on all his stupid laughs at Buck’s ‘jokes’. Romo is really hard to take too, and knowing Nantz is kind of a jerk always takes his commentary down to me.
Almost all play by play announcers I’ve met are jerks, by the way, with Vin Scully being a veryyyy notable exception. They really think they’re amazing at what they do and walk around acting that way. There are several I hope aren’t that way (Breen, Gus Jackson, Charles Rogers), but the experiences I’ve had with some major ones are that their egos are unjustifiably through the roof. Particularly bad ones I met are Jim Kelly (iconic golf announcer before he disappeared), Steve Physioc (great baseball announcer I grew up on who was a total turd when I mixed an MLB All Stars vs. Japan All Stars series for Fox Sports Net in I think 1998 or 1999), and Andrea whatever her name is from NBC who is the play by play for primetime Olympics gymnastics and primetime Olympics figure skating.
I’ll give a shout out to Todd Harris, who I worked with as he was coming up the ranks on ESPN. He was nice and unaffected then. I knew he’d be a star, because he was so good then, but I have no idea if he remained nice once he became big. Some of the mid-tier NBC related guys who came up through Universal Sports already had it forming then. They’re just not friendly people in general, like comedians, and almost all seem to have massive often fragile egos. I really hope Harry Caray was nice because he was one of all-time favorite play by play guys growing up.
Not a football fan, have watched fewer than five regular season football games on TV in the last 20+ years. The real number might be more like 1 or 2. Or now that I think harder about it, maybe zero.
I don’t think the theme is awesome, definitely don’t think it sucks, it’s just so instantly recognizable to me.
For me, the sports theme songs are more “recognizable” from years of pounding into my brain than they are “good.” Not to say they aren’t good - they certainly are - but I have trouble comparing them to actual TV show theme songs.
Theme songs are going the way of bye bye for the most part. They’re unnecessary and often take a page off a show, sometimes 2. I think the better way is like Breaking Bad, but I still like hearing songs like Yellowstone, The Walking Dead, Halt and Catch Fire, 3 Body Problem, Westworld, etc. I can’t stand the theme for Bosch, and there are others I’d skip all day. Just get it in and out and few notes (The Good Place is an ideal length of a theme song for a sitcom) and get to the show. Unless you have Ramin Djawadi or a few others doing your score, it’s not worth the page loss.
Yeah, I’ve noticed lots of opening themes are getting very short. I assumed it was so there could be more show. Hell, the opening of Abbott Elementary is just a few seconds. I’ve also found it amusing that streaming services have a “skip” button at the start of the opening credits. Someone worked really hard on the song and animation and we’re all just skipping it.
Theme songs shouldn’t need to be shorter, if anything they should be longer. With everyone watching via some app, it’s trivial to hit skip intro, so take advantage of that and do a real theme and let people that dislike it skip.
