There’s a strange phenomenon that happens with certain television shows. You remember the opening notes perfectly, can hum them on demand, and feel a wave of nostalgia wash over you. Then someone asks what the show was actually about, and you hesitate. The music burned itself into your memory far more deeply than the content that followed it.
This list isn’t about bad shows. Some of these series were perfectly decent. A few were genuinely good. The argument here is simpler: the theme song became a cultural object in its own right, something that outlasted or outgrew its source material in ways nobody quite expected. TV theme songs are an underappreciated art form that can have a long-lasting impact even beyond the series they were originally from. These eleven are proof of that.
1. Cheers – “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”
“Where Everybody Knows Your Name” is the theme song from the NBC sitcom Cheers, written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo and performed by Portnoy in 1982. In a 2011 Readers Poll in Rolling Stone magazine, it was voted the best television theme of all time. Cheers was a beloved show, no doubt, but the song achieved something rare: a life completely independent of the series.
The single received a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America in 1984, denoting 500,000 units sold in the United States. Gary Portnoy also received an Emmy nomination for the Cheers theme, as well as six consecutive ASCAP awards during the 1980s for the Most Performed Television Themes of the year. The song has appeared in commercials, concerts, and tribute performances for decades, becoming something closer to a cultural institution than a simple TV opener.
2. Mission: Impossible – “Theme from Mission: Impossible”
Lalo Schifrin, the composer who wrote the endlessly catchy theme for “Mission: Impossible,” created more than 100 other arrangements for film and television throughout his career. He estimated that he wrote the main theme in 90 seconds and completed the full arrangement in three minutes. That’s a remarkable ratio of effort to impact for a piece of music that has now persisted for nearly six decades.
Instead of the more common three to four beats per measure, the theme was written in 5/4 time, giving it an off-kilter urgency that no amount of imitation has ever quite replicated. In 2017, the theme was entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The original TV series is mostly forgotten by younger audiences. The theme is everywhere.
3. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Theme”
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song is a song that basically every American aged 25 to 50 knows the words to by heart, an achievement virtually unmatched by any other single piece of music, theme song or otherwise. In terms of songs Americans know the lyrics to, it is probably second only to “Happy Birthday.” That’s a stunning claim, but it’s hard to argue against when you watch people instinctively recite the whole thing from memory.
The hip-hop version of The Beverly Hillbillies, Will Smith’s rap caught you up to speed the first time you saw the show. The series itself was a fun, light 1990s sitcom. The theme became something else entirely, essentially a standalone cultural artifact that most people could perform as a party trick long after they’d forgotten the show’s actual plot lines.
4. The Brady Bunch – “Theme from The Brady Bunch”
This is a case where the theme song was more memorable than the show itself. The Brady Bunch was a pleasant enough family sitcom that ran from 1969 to 1974, but its cultural residue is almost entirely musical. The theme gave viewers the background and synopsis of the show in a way that was so efficient and so catchy that it essentially made watching optional.
The song was written by series creator Sherwood Schwartz, and the degree to which it outlived its context is unusual even by TV standards. Ask most people under forty about the show’s storylines and you’ll get vague answers. Hum the opening bars and you’ll get instant recognition. Sometimes, TV theme songs become so iconic that they overshadow the show itself and have a lasting impact on pop culture, and the Brady Bunch theme is one of the clearest examples of this ever produced.
5. Gilligan’s Island – “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island”
The opening song to the popular 1960s show was also a radio smash, in a longer version, for the made-for-television group. Written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart with lead vocals by Micky Dolenz, the song remains a staple of oldies radio. The premise it describes, shipwrecked castaways on an uncharted island, is genuinely clever as a concept for a theme song. It functions as a three-minute pilot episode compressed into a jingle.
The show was a light, often silly sitcom that critics generally dismissed at the time. The theme, though, is relentlessly hummable and still turns up in pop culture references decades later. On rare occasions, an exceptionally good theme tune can actually overtake the original series in terms of quality, resonance, or memorability, and Gilligan’s Island is a textbook example of that dynamic in action.
6. M*A*S*H – “Suicide Is Painless”
Made popular by the movie version of M*A*S*H, “Suicide is Painless” carried over as the opening credits theme for the legendary television series as an instrumental piece. The decision to strip the lyrics for the TV version was deliberate. Network executives at the time considered the original words too dark for a primetime audience. That said, the haunting melody alone was more than enough.
The show depicted the events of a field hospital during the Korean War, often with a dark comedic twist. This dark humor is forecast in the theme song “Suicide Is Painless.” The theme carried a weight and melancholy that the show’s lighter episodes sometimes didn’t quite match. It set an emotional ceiling that the series spent eleven seasons trying to live up to, and the music got there first every single week.
7. The Big Bang Theory – “The History of Everything”
After all, you can afford to stop chasing radio hits when you’ve written and recorded the theme song for one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. Long after the famous first lyric receded from the airwaves, the Barenaked Ladies’ intro music for The Big Bang Theory has enjoyed television mainstay status, and thanks to the magic of syndication, it’ll continue launching episodes of the show for years after it concludes its 12-season run.
The show ran for twelve seasons and was one of the most watched sitcoms of the 2010s. Its humor has aged unevenly, and critical reassessment of the series has been fairly harsh in recent years. The theme, though, remains genuinely impressive: it compresses the history of the universe into roughly a minute of propulsive, smart pop songwriting. That’s a harder trick than it looks.
8. The White Lotus – “The White Lotus Main Title Theme”
As viewers check in to each new episode of Mike White’s anthology show, they can hear its anxiety-inducing yet danceable score, created by composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer. Veer has won three Emmy awards for his work on the show’s theme. The White Lotus is actually a very good show, which makes it a slightly unusual entry here, but the theme deserves its own mention because it functions so independently from the series that followed it.
Composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer fills both briefs brilliantly with his music for HBO’s tension-wracked, darkly humorous anthology series The White Lotus; regardless of which season you’re watching, the theme song is as weirdly unsettling as it is addictive. It’s the kind of music people seek out and replay without any particular intention of watching the episodes. That’s the test, really, and it passes.
9. The Addams Family – “The Addams Family Theme”
Try singing the first bar of this song, and you’ll find people singing and snapping along. Half the lyrics don’t even make sense (“They’re all together ooky,” anyone?), but then again, neither did the show itself. The theme was composed by series creator Vic Mizzy, who also wrote the score for the 1965 comedy film The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. The finger-snapping hook became one of the most imitated sounds in television history.
The original series ran for just two seasons in the 1960s. Most people have never seen a full episode. Yet the theme has been covered, parodied, remixed, and referenced so many times that it belongs to a category of music that feels communal and timeless. Theme songs can often tell their own story, get stuck in your head, or even be a track you look forward to hearing more than watching the show. This one achieved all three at once.
10. Succession – “Succession Main Title Theme”
This award-hoarding HBO hit series is several things at once, including an addictive family drama and a sharply comedic commentary on late-stage capitalism, so it’s only fitting that its theme song combines multiple elements as well. Composer and performer Nicholas Britell mashes up classical motifs with hip-hop beats, echoing the dominant strains of the story in instantly memorable fashion; it’s no wonder the Emmy-winning end results have been hailed as one of the all-time great TV themes.
Succession was, by almost any measure, a legitimately great show. But Britell’s theme took on a separate existence during the series’ run, becoming a meme, a symbol, and a shorthand for power and ambition that applied far beyond the Roy family. People used it as background music for everything from sports highlights to cooking videos. When a piece of television music becomes that versatile, it has definitively outgrown its origin.
11. Golden Girls – “Thank You for Being a Friend”
The NBC sitcom, which ran from 1985 to 1992 and featured four best friends played by Betty White, Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, and Rue McClanahan, features the joyful song “Thank You for Being a Friend.” It was written by Andrew Gold and released as a single in 1978. But the timeless track wasn’t the producers’ first choice. They originally wanted Bette Midler’s 1972 song “Friends,” but the rights were too expensive.
Before becoming one of TV’s most memorable theme songs, “Thank You for Being a Friend” earned some chart success for singer-songwriter Andrew Gold. The song predated the show by several years and managed to retroactively define it. Today, it’s hard to imagine anyone encountering the song without immediately thinking of those four women in Miami. That’s not just successful branding. It’s a song that arrived fully formed, ready to outlast whatever it was attached to, and it did exactly that.
Theme songs occupy a peculiar space in memory. They arrive before the story, set the emotional tone, and then disappear as the episode begins. The truly remarkable ones linger far longer than the stories they were meant to introduce. The eleven entries here all managed something that most television composers never achieve: they made the opening two minutes the most unforgettable part of the entire run.
