The theme song definitely has that Pavlovian quality of setting the tone and putting you in the mood for a great show. I get it! It’s one of the best shows of all time. I tend to favor the major key, openly cheesy bangers that make you want to run through a wall.Īlmost every person who helped me brainstorm this list mentioned The Sopranos. Sometimes the show is so good that it creates a Pavlovian response to the music, even if the music itself is kind of bad. Sometimes the music itself is so good that it gets you pumped for the show. Some of the golden ages for opening theme songs have been 70s-80s detective shows, late 80s family comedies, and a brief period in the early aughts where the punky indie bands I loved got to write theme songs for mainstream television songs for some reason (weird, but weird-cool). Which raises the obvious question: what were the best opening themes in television? It’s a fun thing to think about, because as soon as you start naming favorites, you realize just how many incredible opening themes there have been. Suddenly, you think of the show, you think of the song and that’s something that is in your head.

As he told us a few years back, “ adds a lot. When Phil Rosenthal, creator of Everybody Loves Raymond and current host of Somebody Feed Phil, took his food show to Netflix, a memorable theme song was one of his first requirements. Most shows on HBO or FX have solid intros. But for every show with absent or irrelevant opening titles, there are an equal number of notably great contemporary opening title sequences - Succession, Game Of Thrones, The Americans. It doesn’t help that you can just click “skip intro” during a Netflix binge and get straight to the money shot. There was period, thankfully brief, when it seemed like the opening credits sequence was becoming a dying art in television.

Words to baywatch theme song