What Makes A Great TV Theme Song? 

The Rockford Files. It sounded like a cup of coffee going down real good. Unedited version has a definitive 70’s guitar solo. This episode could go on all day. Also the Monty Python opening, which is a legit version of J.P. Sousa’s Liberty Bell March is perhaps the most perfect opening for a surreal comedy show ever. Impossible not to act like an idiot when it plays!

Perry Mason theme... Just incredible...

The list needs more spies and cops. Mission Impossible by the great Lalo Shiffrin, Man from Uncle by Jerry Goldsmith, Ironsides by Quincy Jones, the Avengers Laurie Johnson. Ron Grainer wrote The Prisoner theme. And let's face it, the orchestration in the Jetsons theme is just fantastic -with each of the characters getting their own little motif!

Was I the only one waiting for Night Court? What a great tune, jazzy, funky, with slap bass. I love that show!

Aimee, you need to do a part 2 using all the suggestions in the feed....would love to hear it...

Great songs, Aimee! But my all-time favorite is Lalo Shifrin's theme for Mission Impossible (1967), which won the Best Instrumental Theme at the 10th Grammy Awards in February 1968. That 5/4 rhythm gets me every time.

The Bewitched theme, the version when the show first went colour. Muted trumpet, vibes and string harp. Just perfect. Sopranos theme song. Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer jazz rock fusion.

As a professional trombonist & college educator, you can’t leave out The Jetsons theme! Killer brass playing & the halftime sax soli always brought warm feelings and a smile. Also, thank you for your wonderful work on your RU-vid & Nebula channels over the years. Your talent and passion always shine through. We are all better musicians and people because of it!

"The Wire" - "Way Down in the Hole" by Tom Waits but with different performers every season. Great song.

The MASH intro is maybe the most melancholy song I’ve ever heard. I remember it coming on the tv at my grandpa’s house and this wave of sadness coming over me

I only have three tv theme songs in my entire library, and they are Angela (Taxi), Welcome Back (Welcome Back, Kotter), and Hill Street Blues Theme. Sooo good. They give me the big city melancholy feels

Another great theme from the 70s is Chico and the Man, written and performed by Jose Feliciano. Excellent combo of chord changes and melody.

Dallas, The Love Boat, The Twilight Zone. I'm a sucker for theme songs. Angela, Suicide is Painless, Cheers, Hill Street Blues and Moonlighting still give me the chills. Good stuff. Thanks for this.

I can't believe I didn't think of this one when you were taking suggestions - Game of Thrones. Also the theme from the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (rotated between Columbo, McMillan & Wife, McCloud and Hec Ramsey, but the theme was the same no matter which one was playing).

I always loved the fact that the producers liked "Welcome Back" so much that they changed the title of the show from "Kotter" to "Welcome Back, Kotter."

Love it. The theme and transition music on Mr Rogers Neighborhood was my first exposure to real jazz. Turns out it is exceptional music. I loved it even as a really little kid.

Too many to mention. I'm glad you covered TV theme songs! Very memorable. Now, they're only electronic "squiggly" lines, for several seconds, so people won't change the channel.

My heart is so warm hearing these songs. WKRP is in the yacht rock, radio rotation on XM. I was so hoping you’d mention John Sebastian and Welcome Back. It’s so perfect and takes you someplace. I have to mention Happy Days. Once it moved to prime time, they dropped Rock around the clock. The funky bass intro and Hammond gospel organ on Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids is practically Funk to me. Finally Waylon Jennings Good Ole’ Boys every Friday Night at 7.

Aimee, Mary Tyler Moore on line one. Snubbed twice! Sonny Curtis was given (I think) just a brief description of the in-development show and responded with a demo for "Love Is All Around". Jim Brooks, astonished, said "How could he so completely understand our show?" It hadn't been made yet. In the nineties Nickelodeon or TV Land discovered a forgotten first-season version of the Dick Van Dyke Show theme and titles, heavy with bongo interludes; composer Earl Hagen (also "Andy Griffith Show" and "Harlem Nocturne" composer) had no memory of it.

Another great TV theme by Quincy Jones us the theme for "Ironsides". The intro shows up most frequently but the long version on his LP Smackwater Jack has some great playing by the A list jazz musicians of the tine

Appreciate the shoutout, Aimee. Still consider that day in 1989 when I created the Seinfeld Theme a #gooddayatwork 😎

Can I comment a lot on this? I've always regarded "All in the Family" as the finest, not just because it's a great song- which it is- but because rather than introduce the premise and set the tone, as so many do, it introduces the characters, in an unforgettable and indelible way that remains funny through any number of viewings. Delivered simply, live with an audience, on the set, in character. Before they enter a proper scene they've already got us. There's never been anything like it.

Henry Mancini...Mike Post and Pete Carpenter...Hans Zimmer...Johnny Mandel...Bobby McFerrin...Quincy Jones...John Sebastian...all greats

A bit late to the party, but about the only negative thing i can say about this video is that it was too short. I so didn't want it to end.

Thanks for 20 minutes of pure nostalgic joy. I love The Muppet Show theme (and all the music from that show). And The Fresh Prince theme has exactly the right amount of words, dang it!

I won't rehash the ones you already mentioned... And some are absolute gems! Some of my favorites were mostly from the sixties and seventies... Batman Green Hornet Ironside The Bill Cosby Show Baretta The Streets of San Francisco The Partridge Family Lost in Space Get Smart The Dick Van Dyke Show ... But there are some more recent ones... Sons of Anarchy Justified Deadwood Firefly I know I'm late to this party, but I thought I'd just jot these down for posterity

My favorite Theme song from TV has always been the Wild Wild West. Still get a thrill listening to it. Great show as well. RIP Bob Conrad!

The 'wah guitar' in Sanford & Son is actually a clavinet. Quincy was the TV theme MAN back in the day. The Bill Cosby show, Ironsides...

The live version of Dave Grusin's St Elsehwere with Lee Ritenour and Carlos Vega gives me goosebumps every time

One thing I've learned from this: I watched a LOT of TV as a kid. :)

Must not forget Schoolhouse rock, which had some funky tunes. Which also reminds me: who else remembers the pinball machine countdown on sesame street in the 70s early 80s. So cool

So many great choices! I'd throw Dallas, Love Boat, Facts of Life, Mary Tyler Moore and Alice in the mix! Fun nostalgia!

The Cheers theme made it to the radio for a while. There is some parts of the MASH theme that remind me of "Just The Way You Are".

The Barney Miller theme by Allan Ferguson has a interesting story. Allan's son Dan was a excellent guitarist who did studio work and worked on a lot of his dad's soundtracks. Typical of how a lot was done then they were in the studio with a sketch of the tune and the rhythm section. They were trying to come up with ideas for the tune and were not coming up with anything Allan liked so they took a break. On the break Dan put down his guitar grabbed the bass and started playing around, Dan came up with that now famous bass line that the tune is based around.

Dave Grusin did 'St. Elsewhere' too. Love that one. And Mike Post is the KING.

Great job on this video. You really made my day. I lost my eyesight 30 years ago and can vividly remember majority of these shows. Keep up the good work.

YES!!! Taxi, Sanford & Son, Kotter, WKRP, MASH, Cheers... the best ones. So much great music. I'd add Facts of Life and Love Boat to the category of cheesy songs that stick in your head. But one of the best of all time is the rockin' OUTRO to WKRP... better than the excellent opening theme....meow!

That guitar lick at the end of WKRP with the ascending scale has been burned into my brain since I was a kid. Brilliant addition to the song.

Totally agree about the Waltons theme, I wasn't into the show but the theme was amazing. Also wanted to note that WKRP ends with radio callsign jingle which is so cool that they worked that into the song. Mike Post is probably god tier level in this category, so many greats including the ones you mentioned, but my favorite of his has to be Rockford Files. That synth lead fit in so with with all the other instruments. You also mentioned Dave Grusin (who I love for much more than his soundtrack work - not a TV show but On Golden Pond is stellar). My favorite Grusin theme is St. Elsewhere - that show is what got me into him actually. Honorable mention for me would go to Pat Williams who maybe isn't as well known, but he's got some great 70s themes like Streets of San Francisco, Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore Show (we're gonna make it after all!) and Columbo. And maybe a little outside the scope of this video, but worth mentioning is John Williams' piece "The Mission" which was used as the NBC news intro (and maybe still is?). They used lines from it as theme pieces for Today show as well. I guess if you got a John Williams piece on hand, you use every bit of it as long as you can. :) I have to say my all time favorite theme is ER - another master, James Newton Howard - so much great work from him beyond soundtracks, like production and studio work with Toto and Elton.. Anyway I love this topic!

Beautiful !!! I don't know who else has taken an analytical look at theme songs we been hearing through our lives. You. Anybody else? 'Don't think so. You've got a beautiful mind, Aimee. Thanks for sharing it - 💙 💙 💙

Thanks for the great fun and nostalgia - I kept waiting for the Flintstones theme 😁

DALLAS...I Dream of Jeannie... (so many)... I've written a few, in different genres...but haven't published most of them... I love your "take" on so MANY musical subjects, and very much enjoy your viewpoints. Great work. Doug ("Crossbow"), BMI

And The Bob Newhart Show. Thanks again for your GREAT channel, Aimee!

I've always had a thing for TV themes, maybe it's generic my grandmother had an LP of 50's and 60's that my dad ended up owning. Weirdly I was thinking about it today and this video was in my feed. In one of my daydreams about TV themes I realised something: How prevalent jazz was in 90's TV themes. You've mentioned Frasier and the Conan O'Brien theme was very jazzy as was Mike Posts News radio. Cybil used a jazz standard as it's theme! 90's sitcoms and jazz were basically synonymous I can't talk about TV themes without naming two of the best Mike Post and WG Snuffy Walden. Both were prolific and the A-team theme and thirtysomething are two of the best And that's only American themes. So many great British themes exist not to mention other countries.

Ironside was the scariest and most foreboding music nightmare fodder.. On the cartoon side, Courageous Cat -completely heavy, churning song …more suited to a march to the gas chamber. . Cartoon themes are a favorite subject of mine. The early Hanna Barbara cartoons made up for limited animation with very high-quality music opens… like Top Cat in swing meter, and The Jetsons which changed motifs rapidly to fit the personality of each character as they were introduced. -it still blows me away. Very fluid and nicely arranged. The Flintstones and the Jetsons outros both had nightmare endings for father figures, like being locked out of the home by the family cat (or Sabertooth Tiger) and/of George Jetson running perpetually on a haywire treadmill -“Help Jane, stop this crazy thing!”. And… Josie and the Pussycats -another perfect cartoon theme. Excellent bubblegum pop. The consistency of these songs beats the odds… all credit goes to the talented writers and arrangers who triumph in made-to-order songs and it’s deeply embedded in the culture (and in our brains until we die) and most people have no ideas who the writers were.

Oh thank you Aimee! I had a rough day, but you've given me the opportunity to recede back into a land of blissful nostalgia. I love these also!

I really like the Magnum PI Theme - brings me back to a simpler time in college and going home for a much needed break! If you do another of the TV themed overview I think Magnum PI and Simon & Simon, and Rockford (same TV universe w cross over episodes) would be enjoyable

As a keyboard person, you REALLY should dig in on Dave Grusin! He is fantastic!

Great shout including the moonlighting theme, one of the very best shows ever!

I'm totally fan-girling you, such interesting mini documentaries, very interesting topics and very fun, too! 🥰

Howard Roberts played on many of these themes. One of the most heard guitarists, and one of the greatest jazz guitarists and musical educators of all times!

👍🏻 great video , lot of research gone into putting it together … i loved all of them.. one i hadn’t heard of … i’ll add one “the love boat” 😎

I love it. Thanks for the walk down memory lane!

That was absolutely fascinating, Aimee! Thanks for all the work you must have had to do to put it all together. And your actual playing of a few of these on your keyboard was a great touch. I'm 72, and I recognized most of the theme songs from when I used to watch those shows. It would appear I spent way too much time in front of the TV. :-) Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

A walk through childhood in these tunes. WKRP! I totally forgot that one. I love the turkey giveaway episode. "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Some great tunes here. I would add The Love Boat theme. Without a doubt, one of the catchiest songs. These all bring back some great memories.

Don't forget WKRP had a different closing credits theme too! Its a jam!

I would include the Law and Order theme. You should dissect that piece on your channel. It's one crazy chord sequence. Cheers.

I used to watch reruns of many of these shows on Nick at Nite when I was a kid in the 90s. Angela, the theme from Taxi, is literally the reason I love that Rhodes piano sound so much. That one and the M*A*S*H theme remind me of watching TV with my dad. Another fave of mine is Love Is All Around from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Always loved all the background music on The Price Is Right, too, all those funky electric pianos and horns and woodwinds. Kids shows had some great music back then, too. In the 80s and 90s I watched a lot of PBS, and listening to Johnny Costa play on Mister Rogers Neighborhood got me into jazz. Some of the themes I heard on Sesame Street have also never left me, like the theme from the 'pinball numbers' segment. So groovy! Anything by Joe Raposo is pure nostalgia.

This was so fun! TV theme songs make me feel so nostalgic. Some of my favorites that you didn't mention are The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Little House on the Prairie, and The X-Files.

Wonderful memories... and ya, 'MASH' and 'TAXI' themes always break my heart (in a GOOD way)... As you say, there are a lot of additions folks could add to the mix.. but I'll add some movie music composers who did some TV music (you already have Mike Post, Danny Elfman, Neal Hefti and others): Lalo Schifrin (Mission: Impossible), Dimitri Tiomkin (Rawhide), John Williams (Lost In Space), Randy Newman (Monk)... and others.

A great walk down memory lane for me

Jerry Goldsmith for me had an incredible range of music styles and The Waltons theme is my favourite of all his scores. My favourite TV theme is Jerrold Immel's Dallas, the intro is magnificent. You are a very good musician.

I remember downloading classic tv theme songs as MIDI files back in the early/mid 90's when the internet first became available. I would listen to those songs over and over again. I remember my personal favourites were (and still are) the Family Ties theme song, the Who's The Boss theme song and the The Price Is Right theme song.

Very enjoyable video Aimee!! TV themes are my favorite trivia things. Some great ones for me are Stingray (Nick Mancuso series); Magnum p.i.; Simon & Simon; the fourth season of Starsky & Hutch (Gotcha from Tom Scott); S.W.A.T.; Angie; Spenser For Hire and The Greatest American Hero. :)

Wow! I'm amaze on your knowledge of television theme songs, you brought a smile to my face when you mention that (Welcome Back, Kotter - John Sebastian) at the end of your videos it's a favorite of mine. if you don't know the back story to this theme song and how it became a hit song on the radio, it's worth looking it up. another favorite TV theme of mine is (The Courtship of Eddie's Father - Harry Nilsson) I have to say this has been the one of most enjoyable 20 minutes I've spent on RU-vid in the last few days. Thanks Aimee Nolte Music 😊

What a fantastic idea for a RU-vid vid Aimee👍Got so many old time faves. To name just a few: Mission Impossible (Original), Magnum p.i. , Hawaii Five-0, M*A*S*H, WKRP, Hill Street Blues, The A Team, Dream On, Rockford Files, Taxi, Entertainment Tonight (Theme Song), Thunderbirds Theme, The Love Boat, et al. The opening sequence of the TV shows often made the theme tunes pack an extra punch, and making them much more memorable!

A fabulously great episode. Thanks for putting this together., So many entries. I read somewhere where Mike Post (Rockford Files, A-Team, Hill Street Blues, Magnum, P.I.) said that he thought the best television theme song ever written was by Richard Markowitz for "The Wild, Wild, West" (the colorized version with the full orchestra. The reprise for the closing credits was great, too.)

Lovely, lovely video! Thank you!

Robert Altman joked that over the years his son Mike (then 15) collected in royalties many times what Robert made from MASH, just by handing over the angsty poem that became “Suicide is Painless.”

Thank you for presenting me with this tasteful selection! It was very thoughtful of you to include a playlist, too! I agree with some of the commenters asking for a part 2 of this video. Keep up the great work, sharing your love for good music! 🎶 ❤

This is a fun and informative theme. I love TV theme songs, I’ve had them in my playlist for years. You have a good list here with interesting comments and background information on the songs. Some of my favorites come from The Munsters, Lost In Space, Perry Mason, Batman. TV themes make for fun music, with lots of memories attached.

Been lurking for some while now. Sub'd when you replayed a bit of Taxi on your Rhodes. Thanks much.

Great post...bings back lots of memories.. my entry would be Mannix, jazzy with a great piano riff

It was in the end credits rather than the opening theme, but sign me up all day every day for Rockapella's "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" I loved that song growing up and still jam out to it today. It's so sassy. There's something about a lady in a red hat getting a used car salesman to steal the Pyramids that will never fail to make me smile. If you'd asked me, I would have said that the secret to a catchy theme song is what some contemporary classical composers would pejoratively call a "tune," and what the rest of us would just call a "melody": a long, self-contained melodic idea with its own arc and resolution. But your video offers up the idea that the harmonies and arrangements can be just as important, and that's eye-opening for me because I'd never thought about it like that but I think you're right. Sometimes, irrespective of melody, the soundscape of a piece is as memorable as any sequence of notes. The themes from "Taxi," "Welcome Back, Kotter," and "Sanford and Son" from your list are all great examples. The Taxi theme in particular I think does a great job of showcasing the bittersweet tone of the show beneath the humor, so that when you hear it you are reminded of some of the poignant moments in that show.

Sooo many creative people working in the music centers. Chasing the next lead, or hook. I'm old enough to have seen the first episode of Bonanza, just absorbing the sound of that guitar. Dragnet! Mickey Mouse Club march. Point being, they are cranking this stuff out weekly--cold cuts by the slice, and when something good happens, it's really special.

I love the theme from Murder, She Wrote and it’s is a blast to play on the piano🥰

My choices for favorite TV Themes are Love, American Style, Josie and the Pussycats, The Electric Company, The Price is Right, DoubleDare/Card Sharks, Wonder Woman, Alice, That Girl, The Bionic Woman (Jerry Fielding), Angie, Happy Days, and so many to mention.

The brief Dharma and Greg theme, to me, captures that magical champagne bubble feeling of being in love. On the other hand, is the Seinfeld clip where George Costanza is watching the Mad about You theme 🤣

Some others that I love: The Dick Van Dyke Show, Room 222, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Man From Uncle, The Addams Family, Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, Newhart, Hogan's Heroes, I Dream of Jeannie, Route 66, and Wild Wild West. There's so many more, but I'll leave it there

Oh Aimee Aimee Aimee, you missed the happiest feel good TV theme song ever - the theme to the Partridge Family!! "Hello World there a song that we're singing, C'mon get Happy"!! :)

Kudos to you, Aimee for providing us with another excellent video. Great editing of the theme song snippets. So many great choices. As always, I love your gently enthusiastic commentary. With all the madness going on in the world today, it was great to go into the "way back" machine via these tunes. Many of those theme songs tugged hard on my heart strings. "Who knows where the time goes?"

Quincy Jones' YOU GOT IT BAD GIRL album also gave us CHUMP CHANGE, which Mark Goodson used for NOW YOU SEE IT in 1975 and 1989..

Oh gosh...to be fair, we could go on excessively on this topic and still leave some bangers off the list. All your picks are chef's kiss, but in my personal top five are the maniacally energetic theme to Ren & Stimpy and the whimsically expository intro to The Animaniacs.

Great topic for a show. Brings back a lot of memories. Note: “Lost in Space” had two themes. The first one is a little whimsical. The horn hits a high note then descends like all the notes are tumbling down. I think that’s called a slur, if I remember my theory. Then you have these lumbering quarter notes that sound like a monster is walking towards you. 😂 The second theme has more of an upbeat 60’s Brit/pop vibe. Both great. Thanks again Aimee.

That was a fun episode! In addition to the ones that you mentioned, I like the A team, St Elsewhere and Starsky and Hutch

What a great topic to cover. The little sister of movie soundtracks. Think Jon Brion, Danny Elfman etc.

The Robert Stack era Unsolved Mysteries theme still gives me the creeps

Thanks Aimee. You covered a lot of themes from my youth and teen years. Another, slightly later favorite is the theme from “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.”

Growing up in the UK in the sixties I enjoyed many themes from film to TV, many of which were American. There was one theme though, which may not have reached American ears(?) from a BBC science programme called 'Tomorrows World' It was by by Johnny Dankworth . . . Jazz of course. I loved it and still do.

Twun Peaks, Hill St. Blues, Taxi and Northern Exposure for me. The hypnotic shots of the machinery in the opening credits of Twin Peaks plus that amazing music! Plus you could have mentioned the great Delia Derbyshire's role in arranging Grainer's Doctor Who theme.

Aimee! i love your channel and today I really love the image on your shirt: God gives life to Adam (thanks be to God for Michelangelo)! thanks be to God for the gift of music and you!

Something that nobody remembers or talks about regarding the record WKRP in Cincinnati was that a special promotional version of the record was sent to individual radio stations across the country with personalized ending. The ending were done (as far as I could tell) by the same singers and musicians as the record. Instead of the WKRP ending they were like this: I'm at KROY 1240 (Sacramento) Etc. What a way to twist the music director's arm to get play. And remember most programming for stations was done locally, not by some big greedy programming service! I'm trying to track a copy down if any still exist.

A couple of favorites: Hikky Burr (an earlier Bill Cosby theme), Mannix, Mission Impossible, The (first) Bob Newhart theme, Mary Tyler Moore, Wild Wild West, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Man from Uncle

You should have mentioned that the old Batman TV theme was a blues progression complete with chromatic runs and 7th chords. I would love to hear you play that one with a blues shuffle.

When I was in music school, I sang with the men’s glee club (half the guys that sang were also in jazz #1 lab band). After a performance we while on tour somewhere, we ended up at this little dive bar, where there was no entertainment. So a couple of the baritones started singing the rhythm entrance 19:24 of the theme song of the “Wild, wild, west”, tenor broke into a head chart and did 4 part (on the spot). Before the song ended we had a crowd around us and the bartender dropped pitchers of beer (gratis) on the table; after all, it was free entertainment for him, and we ended doing an acapella concert on the spot. So you have a reference here’s a link to the music RU-vid.be/uaSA41CEzSo

MASH and The Odd Couple were movie themes before they were TV shows. The lyrics to The MASH theme were written by Mike Altman (who was the director's son) and we're on the subject of suicide. Johnny Mandel wrote The Melody of course.

Aimee, I’m a huge fan and I thank you for all the great instruction over the years. BUT I can’t believe you managed to pass over the late, great Patrick Williams. For quite a while he was Mr. Television. All the MTM shows. If you’re not instantly familiar, I encourage you to check out his work for both composition and orchestration.

Most shows today have a very short song or no song. I miss the old days. We used to tape record (before video cassette) the songs.

Hi Aimee, great list! Had a music class when Welcome Back Kotter airing (original, I am old :) ) and our music teacher told us we were lucky to have the first class the day after that show because the theme and show put her in a great mood. Some other favorites of mine: Cheers theme (Gary Portnay) Mission Impossible (Lalo Schifrin) The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Harry Nilsson) Wings theme (Franz Schubert)