On our fourth consecutive episode of The Sopranos, we shouldn’t have to sit through another minute-and-46-second intro before we get to the action and violence (even if the music is great). We were no longer required to listen to the opening of Downton Abbey - a beautifully composed orchestral piece by John Lunn - or the iconic “falling man” title sequence in Mad Men that featured “A Beautiful Mine” by RJD2. The problem (or convenience, depending on your stance on the matter) began in 2017, when Netflix added the “skip intro” option on most of its canon of shows and movies. We’re not sure if this once time-honored artform can ever thrive again as it did in its golden age of Cheers or Twin Peaks or Golden Girls, but we do know a couple of things: If we don’t want to see it peter out into the purgatory of all those skipped intros, we need to bring back the Gary Portnoys of the world, and we need to cherish the power of a good opening song coupled perfectly with a star-studded visual counterpart before it’s no longer an option.
#Dallas tv theme song tv
We don’t have to sit through every second of a show if we want to watch it - we can skip intros and look at our smartphones and binge-watch, dammit.īut in this overstimulated and patience-deprived world, we’re slowly killing The Great TV Theme Song. Gary Portnoy’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” prefaced the hit show Cheers, and the world was a better place for it.įlash forward a few decades and streaming services have seized the platform. Quite simply, this wonderfully playful intro shows that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a lot more nuanced than that.In 1982, a show about friends who work at a bar made its debut, and it opened with one of the greatest songs in television history. But amidst calls of “she’s so broken inside” from her animated crew, the toe-tapping tune also finds the time to dispel the notion that the show, and particularly its title, is sexist. Initially opting for the rapid-fire delivery of a rip-roaring Broadway show tune, the theme acknowledges both our hero’s flippancy (“one day I was crying a lot / and so I decided to move to / West Covina…”) and lack of self-awareness (“It happens to be where Josh lives / but that’s not why I’m here”). In just 32 seconds, Rachel Bloom and her cast of co-stars in cartoon-form perfectly embody the musical rom-com’s spirit, while neatly offering a quick catch-up for anyone who’s just succumbed to its many charms. We are, of course, referring to the impossibly perky show-stopping theme of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s superior first season. Plus, how great is it, really, to rhyme “horse” with “of course”? Here are the 50 Best TV Theme Songs of All Time. What will the future of TV intros bring? That we cannot say, but in the meantime we can celebrate old-school classics and some newer favorites (including those mood setters).
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There have been a few exceptions, like the quirky series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but they are also quasi-musicals already. More contemporary series like The Witcher and The Righteous Gemstones created incredibly catchy tunes within their respective shows, but alas, they will never break out into the intro (although unofficially they are definitely the shows’ theme songs). Sometimes those wordless ditties are pure gold, like the harrumphing waltz that begins every Curb Your Enthusiasm-or, for that matter, M*A*S*H*-but it’s not exactly the stuff of Archie and Edith at the piano or the old-timey photos ahead of Cheers, when a show’s theme could tell you a little story by itself. But it’s basically mood music, kind of like the screeching techno that began each episode of Silicon Valley. More paired-down and wordless intros have dominated, like in the case of two TV titans, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but that’s not always a bad thing-led off every episode with a memorable credit sequence that captured an essence of the show- Mad Men’s ratting drums and melodramatic strings, Breaking Bad’s simmering slide guitar and sinister hissing. In 2008, Paste claimed “there’s no denying we’re past the golden age of the TV show theme song.” More than 10 years later, that still feels pretty true.