The best of the TV theme earworms
MY FAVOURITE TV show theme tune is undoubtedly Only Fools And Horses, written and performed by the show’s creator John Sullivan. The opening lyrics go: Stick a pony in me pocket, I’ll fetch the suitcase from the van, ‘cause if you want the best ones but you don’t ask questions, then brother, I’m your man; ‘Cause where it all comes from is a mystery, it’s like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea; but here’s the one that’s driving me berserk: Why do only fools and horses work? They could not more aptly describe the slithery dithery business exploits of Del Boy and his halfwit brother, Rodney.
TV theme songs have the innate ability to transform into earworms incredibly fast and, with the plethora of new shows, thanks to the likes of HBO, FX, NBC, Fox, Netflix and Hulu fast overtaking the film industry in iconic addictive viewing, either your weekly or binge watching fix is accompanied by a well-thought-out musical introduction.
The hard-core, gritty look at Baltimore’s drug trade in The Wire was paired with Tom Waits’s Way Down In A Hole, which became more synonymous with the series than its most notorious character, Omar. Mike Post, the composer behind Law & Order’s epochal “ching ching or chong chong or ding ding or dung dung”, is said to have used, among other “instruments”, a group of monks stomping on the floor. The listener is meant to equate the thunk thunk with either a judge’s gravel or the sound of a jail door being closed.
Post, incidentally, is also the mastermind behind famous 80s and 90s TV drama theme songs such as Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Macgyver, Magnum P.I. and LA Law.
Another catchy tune that you just can’t help singing along to is The Big Bang Theory’s Barenaked Ladies’ reworked acoustic version of lead singer Ed Robertson’s improvised The Theory Of Everything.
Show creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, as legend has it, were in the audience at one of the band’s live concerts where Robertson tried out his new tune, influenced by his recent reading of Simon Singh’s book, Big Bang: The most important scientific discovery of all time and why you need to know about it. Lorre and Prady then commissioned the band to create a song lasting 15 seconds that would sum up our entire existence since nearly 14 million years ago.
One of my favourite contemporary shows is the History channel’s Vikings. Its theme song, If I Had A Heart, is a tormented, moody mix of organ, hypnotic synth beats and dark lyrics by Swedish singer Karin Dreijer Andersson, also known as Fever Ray. The track, off her self-titled 2009 album, has also been featured in episodes from Breaking Bad, Black Sails and The Following.
Suits, for some unknown reason, has a huge following in South Africa, so much so that lead actor Gabriel Macht, who plays the arrogantly cool lawyer Harvey, is featured in the current crop of Dstv adverts.
The catchy opening track to the series, Greenback Boogie, written and performed by Los Angeles-based band Ima Robot, off their third album release, 2010’s Another Man’s Treasure, sums up the theme of commercial greed in the show quite perfectly. Hmmm… maybe that’s why it’s so popular locally, with lyrics like Get another piece of pie, for your wife resonating with the general public’s daily news feed of governmental corporate gold diggers.