If you've ever caught yourself walking around humming a familiar-but-unidentifiable tune, and then the minute you put words to it, realized you were singing the Scooby-Doo theme, this listing is going to resonate. These Goggle box earworms can exist hard to milk shake, but that'southward their job: to get into your head and stay there.

TV themes tin innovate you to a character (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), an origin story (The Beverly Hillbillies), or just prepare the mood (The Sopranos). Many of them are written past music vets with long histories of success, either on TV or on the pop charts. Sometimes it's a theme that launches a career, and sometimes it represents a fleeting moment in the spotlight. No matter what, Telly theme songs can become indelibly etched onto your hidden, and almost everyone has not just a favorite, but also one they wish they'd never heard. We've got both, so here are the parameters we're going to work with.

  1. No instrumentals. That' a whole category all by itself, and deserving of its own list, which yous know if you've ever allow the Game of Thrones music play in your head equally you go virtually your business concern. Information technology sure adds drama.
  2. No songs that were out in that location before they were attached to Boob tube shows. That rules out some big ones, similar Smallville, The O.C., Parenthood, and even that annoying, catchy song from Enterprise.

That'south it! We've included some kids' shows in here too, since they seem especially designed to haunt you, but left out some of the classics, like The Flintstones and The Bugs Bunny Route Runner Prove. No doubt everyone will take a favorite they think should be here, so get your lament fingers ready. First, beginning singing forth with the ones nosotros did include in our list of xx Idiot box Theme Songs Yous Still Can't Get Out Of Your Head.

21 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt "Unbreakable" (2015)

One time upon a time, a grouping of musicians called the Gregory Brothers (consisting of three brothers and one of their wives) idea it would be funny to use Machine-Tune on random news clips, turning interview subjects into singers. They added some green screen footage of themselves, played effectually a scrap, then put some of the videos on YouTube. Good choice: the videos started going viral and racking up millions of views, allowing them all to showtime making more videos as a total time job. They called their series Songify The News.

Flash forward. Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, and Jeff Richmond are working on a new prove for Netflix called The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, about a woman who emerges from an hugger-mugger bunker, where she'due south lived with a cult for 15 years. They need a theme song that'll fix both the story premise and the tone of the show, and wanted something that sounded like the Gregory Brothers videos. So they called the Gregory Brothers. Fey and Carlock had already written the monologue for Walter Bankston, the "bystander" who saw Kimmy and her friends emerge from the bunker, and let the grouping take it from there. They were relieved non to take to spend hours scouring websites for news reports; having a fake i written for them fabricated their job a lot more fun.

Picket the original version, without the music, to meet what they had to work with.

20 The Partridge Family "C'mon Get Happy" (1970)

Come on now and run into everybody / and hear us singin' / Nothing better than existence together / when we're singin'

Sound familiar? Non then much, probably. Here's the 1 everybody recognizes:

Hello, globe, here's a song that we're singin' / C'monday get happy / A whole lotta lovin' is what we'll be bringin' / We'll make you happy

We had a dream we'd go trav'lin' together / Nosotros'd spread a piffling lovin' and so we'd keep movin' on / Somethin' e'er happens whenever we're together / We get a happy feelin' when we're singin' a vocal

This was the Existent theme toThe Partridge Family, heard in the second season and forever after. The only cast members singing on information technology were Shirley Jones and David Cassidy, her existent-life stepson. In fact, they were the just ones immune to sing on any of the Partridge Family unit records, fifty-fifty though the whole group was nominated for a Grammy for All-time New Artist in 1971. (The Carpenters won.)

Jones was already a star in her ain right, simply Cassidy became a superstar considering of the series. He toured the earth, selling out stadiums and beingness literally mobbed past fans wherever he went, then would come habitation and find women in his auto and his home, often naked. But once a week, fifty-fifty after he'd posed naked on the cover of Rolling Rock, he was make clean, cute Keith Patridge, urging viewers to "c'mon get happy" and climb aboard the Mondrian-themed bus with the rest of the gang.

19 Batman "Batman Theme" (1966)

"Word and music by Neil Hefti." That was the description of the theme vocal past one of the viii singers who recorded it for the 1960s cult Television receiver series Batman, since it featured only one unmarried give-and-take, "Batman." Of class that's if you don't count "na na na na na na na na ... " as words, which technically, they are not.

Information technology took Hefti, a former head of A&R at Reprise and big band trumpet histrion, well-nigh a month to write the simple-sounding theme, and he said he sweated more than over that than any other piece of music he'd ever written. "I was near going to call them and say, I tin can't do it. Merely I never walk out on projects, so I sort of forced myself to finish." The challenge, he felt, was that the show was a comedy, but its characters were serious. Batman and Robin wouldn't break the law even to salve their ain lives, and Hefti took their commitment as seriously as they did, but without the technicolor outfit. And so he struggled for a long time, tearing upwards one effort after another, until he finally came up with the song that would go on to be covered past everyone from Jan and Dean to The Jam. He solved his comedy/drama problem past contrasting a driving rhythm with harmonies and horns, and in doing so, he created a cult classic.

18 The Love Boat "Love Gunkhole" (1977)

Who doesn't recall the oh-so croon-y theme song to The Love Boat? Information technology promised its weekly guests take a chance, romance, and nigh of all, honey, for everybody who boarded the Pacific Princess. Critics hated the show with a passion, simply the ratings soared.

Composer Charles Pull a fast one on had created dozens of TV and pic themes, as well as the Grammy-winning "Killing Me Softly With His Song." He brought his idea for the Love Boat theme music to lyricist Paul Williams, a songwriter with a rails record of hits and an ongoing career as a vocalizer and thespian. Williams' first major acting role had been playing Virgil, an orangutan, in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. The year before The Beloved Boat went on the air, he'd had a massive striking with Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen," the theme vocal to the remake of A Star Is Built-in. Williams looked over the show concept and decided it wouldn't final 6 weeks. It ran for ten years.

The theme they created together was sung past Jack Jones for all of The Love Gunkhole's seasons except its terminal one, when Dionne Warwick's version took over. And despite its unambiguous depiction of love and romance on the high seas, Gavin MacLeod, who played Helm Merril Stubing, would later advise that it could be reinterpreted to be a song praising Jesus. It was flexible every bit well equally memorable.

17 Rawhide "Rawhide" (1959)

This is the oldest song on our listing, and nosotros might not take included it at all were it not for its 1980 resurrection by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Rawhide, a show about a group of cattle drivers in the 1860s, premiered in 1959, and ran for eight seasons. Today, it'due south best known as the show that launched Clint Eastwood'due south career.

The theme vocal was written by composer Dimitri Tiomkin and songwriter Ned Washington, and sung by Frankie Laine. Information technology popularized the term "hell bent for leather," and managed to have a life long afterwards the prove it was created for. It'southward been covered by a diverse range of artists, including Liza Minelli, The Jackson five, and Oingo Boingo, but it was its advent in The Blues Brothers Movie and its accompanying soundtrack that put information technology dorsum into the spotlight. In a movie full of slap-up songs, information technology holds its own.

The songwriters knew their stuff. Both had long careers and won a number of Oscars for their songs. Washington wrote classics similar "Town Without Pity," "My Foolish Center," "When You Wish Upon a Star," and "The Nearness Of You," and Tiomkin had created music for dozens of westerns. Frankie Laine would later sing the theme to Mel Brooks' movie Blazing Saddles, a parody of classic westerns, complete with whipcracks. He sang it with such sincerity and centre that Brooks was sure he didn't know the flick was a comedy, and when Brooks saw the tears in his eyes, he didn't have the heart to tell him.

sixteen Welcome Back, Kotter "Welcome Back" (1975)

Back in the 1970s, producer Alan Sacks was looking for a theme song for a new show chosen Kotter, starring Gabe Kaplan, about a guy who returned to his neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to teach the type of slacker high school kid that he once used to be. The bear witness would launch the career of John Travolta, and create a new set of high school archetypes for a generation of Telly viewers.

Sachs needed a theme vocal, and what he wanted was something that had a Lovin' Spoonful type of sound. He was lucky; his agent likewise represented Lovin' Spoonful's founder, John Sebastian. And then Sachs asked Sebastian to  create something, and what he got was "Welcome Back." Sachs liked it so much that he changed the proper name of the show to Welcome Dorsum, Kotter to lucifer information technology. Initially, Sebastian only wrote i poetry, but later added in more than along with a harmonica solo, and released it as a single, with early on pressings titled "Welcome Dorsum Kotter" just so record-buyers would know information technology was the vocal from the hit show. It spent a week in the number one spot on Billboard's Top 100, selling over a million copies. (It even fabricated it to #93 on the Land nautical chart.)

Decades afterwards the show was off the air, the vocal yet resonated. It'due south been sampled by Onyx in "Slam Harder" and by Lupe Fiasco in "Welcome Back Chilly." And when Mase released his first album after a five twelvemonth break, he sampled it in a song called, of grade, "Welcome Dorsum."

xv Phineas and Ferb  "Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day" (2007)

You don't demand to be a kid to appreciate the joys of Phineas and Ferb. Every week brought inventive stories, unforgettable characters, running jokes with taglines that never got quondam, and a steady stream of tricky songs.  The theme vocal was performed by Bowling For Soup, who also co-wrote it. The show's creators, Dan Povenmire and Swampy Marsh, were fans of the band and asked lead vocalizer Jaret Reddick to have the snippet they'd already started and create a theme out of information technology, forth with a three and a half minute version for radio. Reddick watched a couple of crude cuts of the show, and wrote the vocal the side by side twenty-four hour period ... and scored an Emmy nomination for his efforts. Swell for a song that only took him 20 minutes to write.

The band has appeared on the animated  evidence as themselves, and contributed other songs, as well as updating the lyrics of the theme song periodically for specials and holidays. Reddick besides played the recurring role of Danny, the lead vocaliser of fictional band Dear Händel. They performed in multiple episodes, most memorably to celebrate the anniversary of Phineas' mother and Ferb's father with a live functioning of their '80s hitting, "Y'all Snuck Your Mode Right Into My Heart."

14 The Jeffersons "Movin' On Upwardly" (1975)

The Jeffersons was a spinoff of All In The Family, and took George and Louise Jefferson out of the Bunkers' Queens neighborhood and on to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, cheers to George'due south success as a businessman. The theme song, "Movin' On Upwardly," reflected the joy of the move with an infectious vanquish and a sense of celebration.

It was written by Jeff Barry and Ja'net Dubois. Barry was known for writing a cord of pop hits with partner Ellie Greenwich; their work with Phil Spector helped define the "girl grouping" audio of the 1960s.  Dubois, who also provided the lead vocal, was already well known to Goggle box viewers as Willona on Proficient Times, some other spinoff (of a spinoff) of All In The Family.

The vocal has get something of an anthem. Information technology was covered past Sammy Davis Jr. in 1978, sampled past Nelly in "Concoction Upwardly," and often gets played at sporting events when a team that's been in a slump makes a comeback. Ludacris in one case told Rolling Stone that The Jeffersons was "every black person'southward favorite Television set theme, because we movin' on upwards." The song, more than than the show, still resonates.

As proof of its place in American culture, President Barack Obama toured New Orleans on the 10th ceremony of Hurricane Katrina, and met a woman named Wheezy, he sang her the opening lines of the vocal, to her please.

13 Hannah Montana "The Best of Both Worlds" (2006)

Before she twerked, before she rode a wrecking brawl naked, earlier she smoked pot on stage at an awards show, Miley Cyrus was a sweet 13 year-old starring in a boom Telly series chosen Hannah Montana. She auditioned to play one of Hannah's friends, but was asked to try out for the lead, and so told she was too young for the function. But when the producers realized she could sing, they gave her the starring role anyhow and she instantly became a teen idol.

She sang the show'due south theme vocal herself. Information technology was written by Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil, and was one of only two TV theme songs in that decade to nautical chart on Billboard's meridian 100. (The other was the theme from iCarly, sung by Miranda Cosgrove.) When Cyrus was on bout, she'd apparel upwardly equally Hannah to perform the song, simply then years later, regretted some of the effects of her superstardom, in terms of both its effect on her as a teen growing upwardly in front of an audience, and on other teenage girls watching it. While she was singing "Best of Both Worlds" to packed concert halls and stadiums, she was total of feet and self-doubt.

Since so, she's taken control of her own paradigm and career. She started out as a teen idol and then became a magnet for scandal and criticism, but appreciation for her journey and her talent has come from some unexpected places. Woody Allen has bandage her in the TV series he's doing for Amazon, and her godmother, Dolly Parton, is a staunch Miley supporter, remembering how she used to get criticism for her own sexy wardrobe choices. About Cyrus, she said,"And so I did go through that, but I don't give her advice. Everyone has to walk this journey according to their own rules. That's what she's doing. And I lurve her."

12 The Brady Bunch "The Brady Bunch" (1969)

Written by show creator Sherwood Schwartz and veteran composer/arranger (and actor) Frank De Vol, the theme for The Brady Bunch was originally sung by a slightly obscure ring called The Peppermint Trolley Company. By season two of the show, the producers got smart and decided they'd be better off having the actual cast sing the song. (Interestingly, the Brady kids did a lot more real singing on their show than the Partridges, who were actually playing a singing group.)

All six Brady kids sang the theme together for the second season, but when the third one rolled effectually, they switched things up, and had the boys sing the first poetry nearly the girls, the girls sang the second poesy about the boys, and then they joined up together for the end. For a prove about a blended family, this fabricated perfect sense. Decades after, in that location are multiple generations who yet recollect every word.

For a dissimilar take on this squeaky-make clean song from a squeaky-clean prove, check out Jamie Foxx's version, which he says he would sing to prospective dates.

11 The Greatest American Hero "Believe It or Not" (1981)

Anybody knows this vocal, and yet not everybody knows where information technology'due south from, probably because the evidence it was from was but on the air for 2 measly seasons. "Believe It Or Not", written by Mike Post and Stephen Geyer, spent 26 weeks on the Hot 100, peaking at #2 because "Endless Love" wouldn't get out of the way.

The show was The Greatest American Hero, and its shaky premise was that a school instructor (William Katt) met some aliens who gave him superpowers when he wore a special (and pretty dopey) superhero adjust. He lost the instruction manual, and comedy ensued as he learned exactly what special abilities information technology gave him. Example: It made him fly, but didn't teach him how to land smoothly. Wacka-wacka!

"Believe Information technology Or Not" was also a pretty dizzy song, also as a smash striking. Information technology was sung past Joe Scarbury, who only ever released one album his whole life, back in 1981. But the song lived on. It was used in the motion picture The 40 Year-Old Virgin, triggering confusing memories for thousands who couldn't place information technology, and Michael Moore put information technology in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/eleven for a montage nigh how the popular vote went to Al Gore in 2000, with the telling line, "Suddenly I'm on top of the earth / It should have been somebody else …"

But the best cover? It's a toss-upwardly between its memorable high-speed version seen on Gilmore Girls, with Sebastian Bach on vocals (and Melissa McCarthy'south line, "I estimate information technology sounds unlike alive"), and the adaptation done by George Costanza on Seinfeld, every bit the outgoing message on his answering machine. And if you lot're in doubt that the song is really a cult archetype, await to its lyric writer, who supervised the songwriting staff on another brusk-lived cult classic, Cop Rock .

x Family Guy "Family Guy Theme Song" (1999)

When Seth MacFarlane created Family Guy, he had a hard time convincing the Fob network to permit him include an opening theme song. Theme songs for shows are part of a tradition that'due south been disappearing over time, as networks worry more and more about keeping the audition'southward attending. Just MacFarlane pushed for it. "I think what [executives] don't realize is, showmanship is showmanship." he told NPR. "It hasn't changed in hundreds of years. It's a pulsate roll saying, 'Here comes a show.' ... And it gets the audience psyched upwards."."

Once he won the boxing, he got composer Walter Murphy to write the music for his showstopping opening sequence. Tater had had an oddball #one hit in in the mid 1970s with his disco accommodation of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which found its way onto the 15-times-platimum Sabbatum Night Fever soundtrack. The 2 combined their efforts along with producer David Zuckerman to create a memorable, fun-to-sing-along-with opening song.

Part tribute to the music McFarlane grew up on, and role parody of the classic open to All In The Family, the trip the light fantastic toe sequence is matched in exuberance by the music that accompanies it. They recorded various versions in different seasons to accommodate changing cast members, and MacFarlane says he re-did his own vocal track to more clearly enunciate "express joy and weep," since so many people thought it was "f'n cry".

The song's popularity made it easier when MacFarlane was developing American Dad, and effortless when he created The Cleveland Show. "I think by that point, they realized it was a stylistic thing for these shows — that you demand a trivial fleck of a drum roll. You need a petty bit of a P.T. Barnum intro." We couldn't have said information technology better ourselves.

nine Sesame Street "Tin can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street" (1969)

Who doesn't hear those first few notes and get transported back to their childhood? "Can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street" is some of the first music many of us were exposed to as we watched Sesame Street, learned our letters and numbers, and heavily identified with the Cookie Monster. The show was e'er filled with great music, but its theme is the oldest song in its history, premiering forth with the first episode on November 10, 1969.

The music was written by Joe Raposo, who was also the creative force backside "C is for Cookie" and "Bein' Green." The lyrics came from Raposo, Jon Stone, and Bruce Hart. The original version featured harmonica by renowned jazz musician Toots Thielemans and a children'southward choir. There was some variation on the lyrics: sometimes it opened with "Come up and play …" and other times it was "Sunny twenty-four hour period …" but the tune remained the same. It got jazzier, briefly, in 1988, when Gladys Knight and the Pips sang it on a pledge-drive event called The Sesame Street Special, with kids, cast members, and muppets dancing all effectually them.

The song  has been updated over the years, simply no thing what changes, its inspiration always comes from the original by Joe Raposo. In 2016, information technology got a brand new organisation for its 46th season and its move to HBO.

P.South. All the kids in that opening sequence? They're all in their 50s now, at least. Probably their 60s.

8 The Large Bang Theory "The History of Everything" (2007)

This is possibly the all-time theme song story of the agglomeration.

Barenaked Ladies pb vocalizer Ed Robertson got inspired afterward reading a book past Simon Singh called "Big Bang: The Nigh Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You lot Need to Know Almost It." Then in true Barenaked Ladies form, he improvised a song about cosmological theory during one of their shows in L.A. Sitting in the audience that night were Chuck Lorre and Pecker Prady, who were developing a show called The Big Bang Theory about some geeky geniuses and their friends. At that moment, they two producers decided that they had to get the Barenaked Ladies to create the theme song.

When they start approached Robertson, he was hesitant and wanted to know who else they were asking. Jack Johnson? Counting Crows? He did not want to spend fourth dimension writing a theme only to find out that there were others doing the same thing at the aforementioned time. But they reassured him that he was the but ane they speaking to.

Their assignment? Create a song that encompassed everything that's happened since the beginning of fourth dimension upwardly to the present in 15 seconds. Robertson did an audio-visual demo, but when they wanted to keep information technology, he insisted that they record it with the entire group. Fortunately, Lorre and Prady liked the new version even more. The rest, along with everything the song describes in 24 seconds, is history.

7 The Mary Tyler Moore Show "Beloved Is All Around" (1970)

If in that location was always a theme song that captured the spirit of its opening montage, it's the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Entertainment Weekly called the scene at the terminate where Mary tosses her hat into the air the 2d greatest moment in the history of television for a reason: information technology fix the whole tone of the show. "Wasn't information technology great?" Mary Tyler Moore said. "Liberty, exuberance, spontaneity, joy — all in that i gesture. It gave a hint at what you were going to come across."

The song that went with it was written and performed by Sonny Curtis. He got a call at abode at 11:00 a.yard.  ane day request if he was interested in writing a song for a new sitcom starring Mary Tyler Moore.  Someone dropped off a clarification of the show an hour later, just a basic outline of the premise. Past ii:00, Curtis had a verse ready and asked his friend who he was supposed to sing information technology to. He was sent over to come across James 50. Brooks, the evidence's co-creator.

Brooks wasn't thrilled to see him. He was busy, and wasn't ready to start thinking virtually a theme song, but since Curtis was already there, he listened. And and so he picked upwards the phone—the one in the room, there were no cell phones of course—and started making calls to get people to come hear information technology. By the time he was washed, the room was full of appreciative listeners who agreed with Brooks that they'd found their theme.

Brooks was heading to Minneapolis that weekend to shoot the show's opening sequence, and wanted the vocal with him, so he sent out for a record recorder and Curtis, nonetheless game, sing it for the tenth time that day. When information technology came fourth dimension to do the official version, Curtis told them they couldn't have the song if he didn't become to sing it, and they wanted it badly, so they hired him. He inverse the lyrics in season two to reflect Mary'south newfound independence, and the song kicked off every episode of the show for vii seasons, and forever onward in syndication.

6 Malcolm in the Eye "Boss of Me" (2000)

Malcolm in the Middle's creator, Linwood Boomer, was looking for a theme vocal for his new show, he picked up the phone and chosen They Might Exist Giants. The ring, the brainchild of John Flansburgh and John Linnell , had been making music for years, simply was starting to brand their mark in the soundtrack world too. Boomer gave Flansburgh a call, and got his married woman, who instantly recognized the name: Boomer had played Adam Kendall (Mary Ingalls' husband),  on Little Business firm on the Prairie,and how many Linwood Boomers could in that location be? Only the ane, it turned out.

Boomer had a very clear thought of what he was looking for in a theme song, something high free energy that would capture the feeling of a house full of out-of-control brothers. TMBG e'er had a stack of half-finished songs around, then they grabbed one that felt right and tailored the rest to fit the evidence. The final product became the first Idiot box theme ever to win a Grammy for Best Vocal Written for a Moving picture or TV Show. Information technology was the commencement Grammy for the band, also.

5 4. Laverne & Shirley "Making Our Dreams Come True" (1976)

"Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer incorporated!"

While the memorable theme song "Making Our Dreams Come True" was written past Boob tube theme show vets Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, the opening rhyme that Laverne and Shirley recited every bit they skipped downwardly the street arm-in-arm was actually a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant star Penny Marshall remembered from her childhood. "Penny, teach Cindy, 'Sclemeel, schlimazel," her brother Garry—producer and creator of the show—told her, and thus information technology was also learned by millions of others.

The song itself followed. Pull a fast one on and Gimbel didn't know much about the show when they put it together, but that the ii master characters were blue collar women who worked in a brewery in Milwaukee, and had big dreams. Their initial stab at it was a song called "Hoping Our Dreams Volition Come True," but the producers felt that it didn't capture the force and determination of the title characters. They went back to the cartoon lath with that in mind and came dorsum with with "Making Our Dreams Come True," which better reflected the tone of the prove.

The vocal was put out equally a single in 1976, the simply hit for singer Cyndi Grecco, and information technology remains tricky as always. Final year, some behind-the-scenes footage captured American Idol judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr. spontaneously singing information technology together, with Lopez getting the words right effortlessly and Urban confessing afterwards that he watched as well much TV as a child. (Is at that place such a affair?)

4 Pokémon "Pokémon Theme" (1998)

When Jason Paige first sang the demo for the Pokémon theme vocal, all he knew about the show was that it had caused a bout of epileptic seizures in Japan. He certainly didn't expect the vocal to become so pop that it would be used, remembered, and sung nigh ii decades later on. It'southward tagline, "Gotta catch 'em all," is one that provides instant flashbacks to their childhood for nearly anyone who grew upwards in that era.

Seven months afterwards the show premiered in the The states, in that location were at least 40 licensing deals in place for related products, pulling in over 200 million dollars in revenue. To jump on the turn a profit bandwagon, an anthology was recorded, featuring a total-length version of the song, written by John Siegler and John Loeffler, both expert jingle writers. It went platinum inside four months. While Siegler and Loeffler fabricated colossal amounts of money, Paige, who'd performed on multiple tracks, got a flat fee for his vocals and spent years suing to try to get a piece of the Pokémon pie. He eventually had some success, just it was nil compared to what the song he was singing raked in for the company that endemic it.

With the inflow of Pokémon Go, the song jumped in popularity once more. The game was launched on July 6th, and by the 14th, information technology had sold 7000 downloads, up 1079% from the previous week. "Gotta take hold of 'em all" is as relevant today equally it ever was.

3 Friends "I'll Be In that location For You" (1994)

How many people does it take to brand a theme vocal? There were vi in the cast of the hitting show Friends, and it took seven to create the theme song for information technology. Within three days, they wrote and recorded it, a combination effort of the show'due south executive producers, and Phil Solem and Danny Wilde of the Rembrandts.  With an opening riff heavily influenced by The Beatles' "I Feel Fine," the song they created lasted a minute, the perfect length to introduce a TV show.

But it didn't end in that location. The song became popular, so popular that some DJs at a Nashville radio station decided to loop it together iii times and play information technology on the air … over and over over again. They started getting requests for it afterwards that, and when that caught on, the tape label went dorsum to the Rembrandts and insisted that they flesh it out into a proper 3-minute pop song.

The adjacent task was creating a full-length music video. They spent 3 days shooting it on the Saturday Night Live stage, with the band and all six bandage members.  The original concept required the cast to hit the Rembrandts with a fish to go rid of them, but the cast rapidly nixed the fish plan. They didn't need it. The video was every bit much of a hit as the song, playing on networks like VH1 in heavy rotation.

Blender mag may have called it the 15th worst song ever, on a list of 50, just it topped multiple Billboard charts and peaked at the Hot 100 at #17.  Information technology was the biggest hit the ring ever had past a long shot.  Years subsequently, Solem and Wilde would perform it in NYC at the Central Perk pop-up shop, joined on phase by James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther on Friends as, of course, a guy who worked at the java shop.

2 Thank you "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" (1982)

In 2011, a Rolling Stone Readers Poll alleged "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" as the best Television set theme vocal of all time. In 2013, TV Guide made the aforementioned proclamation. But this incredibly popular song had a specially rocky offset.

Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart had written a song together for a musical chosen "Preppies Like Us," and a friend of theirs brought it to Thank you producers Glen and Les Charles. They wanted to utilise it for the show, but information technology was already spoken for, so they asked the songwriters to come up with something else.  Their get-go iii attempts were rejected, but when the fourth i came in, the producers started to like what they heard. The music was right, but at present the lyrics needed work.

Singing the blues when the Cherry Sox lose It'due south a crisis in your life On the run 'cause all your girlfriends Want to be your wife And the laundry ticket's in the wash

Besides gloomy? That was the consensus. Information technology was too also specific.

They took some other crack at it, and came up with this:

Making your style in the world todayTakes everything yous've gotTaking a interruption from all your worriesSure would help a lotWouldn't yous similar to get away?

They had information technology. Portnoy sang the song, with a minimal musical organisation that featured him on piano and vocals along with a drum, guitar, and bass. A clarinet was added after. The full version of the song did retain some of the bleaker vocals, notwithstanding, but Thanks  fans didn't hear it until it was played over a montage in the prove'southward 200th episode. The lyrics are a little bizarre, probably reflective of the thought that the show is nearly a bunch of people who hang out in a bar all the fourth dimension. Get see a lyric video here to see what we hateful.

ane Honorable Mentions

Everyone is going to to proper noun songs that aren't on this list, and possibly even complain that they should've been included ahead of the ones that made it. And then hither, in no particular lodge, are a few honorable mentions for Boob tube theme songs we didn't get to, that yous can't exit of your head no matter how hard you endeavor.

WKRP in Cincinnati: This ane seems to evoke an emotional reaction in people who remember it. 1 of those songs that explained the show premise, it tells the story of radio program managing director Andy Travis, who's starting fresh in Cincinnati afterward a break-up and, nosotros think, a career that hasn't quite measured up to what he expected.

Dukes of Hazzard "Skilful Ol' Boys": When y'all get Waylon Jennings to sing your theme song, people remember information technology.

Liv and Maddie "Better in Stereo": Ask any parent of an aspiring tween if they know this one. Improve yet, simply outset humming it until they offset screaming.

The Monkees: Hey hey, we're the Monkees! Still spinning on oldies radio stations.

Spiderman: The one from the 1960s drawing. One listen, and yous're doomed.

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Did we forget your favorite hyper-catchy theme song? Let united states know in the comments.

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