Say the name of a 1960s or 1970s TV show to someone of a certain age and watch what happens. Before you know it, they’re humming the opening bars, clicking their fingers or launching into the first verse. Many of us can still sing these theme songs from start to finish, decades after we last watched the show, even if we can’t remember what we came into the kitchen for.
So which theme songs have stayed with a generation, and why are they so hard to forget? Here are some of the best-loved, the stories behind them, and what research suggests about why they’ve stuck.
(The words aren’t printed here. Song lyrics are protected by copyright, and in any case, most readers won’t need them.)
Why theme songs stick
Part of the answer is simple repetition. A theme song played at the start of every episode, every week, for years, and then again in reruns, gets heard hundreds of times. Many of these songs were built to be sung along to, and children watching at home did exactly that.
The music itself helps too. In a study published in 2016 in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, Kelly Jakubowski and colleagues at Durham University and Goldsmiths, University of London, asked about 3,000 people which songs most often got stuck in their heads. Compared with similarly popular songs, these “earworms” tended to be faster, with familiar melodic shapes combined with an unusual leap or repetition that made them stand out. “You can, to some extent, predict which songs are going to get stuck in people’s heads,” Jakubowski said. Many TV themes seem to fit that description: short, upbeat and built around a hook. The study examined earworms from popular music, though, not people’s ability to recall television themes decades later.
Interestingly, singing doesn’t automatically make words easier to learn. In a 2007 study in Memory & Cognition, Canadian researchers Racette and Peretz found that when people learned the lyrics of an unfamiliar song, singing them didn’t help recall compared with speaking them. The study concerned learning unfamiliar songs, not remembering familiar themes after many years. Repetition and childhood associations are plausible parts of that longer story, rather than explanations these studies established.
Several of the best-known themes also told a story. They explained who the characters were and how they got there, which gave the words a shape that’s easy to follow and hard to forget.
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
For Australian children of the late 1960s, few tunes are more instantly recognisable. The National Film and Sound Archive describes the theme from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, composed in 1968 by Eric Jupp, as one of the most recognisable Australian TV theme songs.
Jupp was an English-born bandleader who was a familiar face on ABC television through the variety program The Magic of Music, and a prolific composer for film and television. Skippy’s theme travelled the world with the show, which was translated into several languages and broadcast in dozens of countries. Repeat screenings on the Nine Network meant that later generations of Australian children grew up with it too, which may be why grandparents and grandchildren can sometimes sing it together.
Gilligan’s Island
Few theme songs did as much work as “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle.” Written by the show’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz, with George Wyle, it explains the premise in rhyme and introduces every character in about a minute, so even a first-time viewer knew exactly what was going on.
There’s a well-known twist. In the first season, two of the castaways, the Professor and Mary Ann, weren’t named in the song at all, simply lumped together with the other passengers. After a dispute among the cast over billing, the theme was rewritten for the second and third seasons to include them. The show only ran for three seasons and 98 episodes, but reruns kept the song alive for decades.
The Brady Bunch
Sherwood Schwartz struck again a few years later. For The Brady Bunch, he wrote the lyrics and Frank De Vol composed the music, as SlashFilm recounts. Like Gilligan’s theme, it tells a story: how two families came together to become one.
The version many of us remember changed over the years. A band called the Peppermint Trolley Company recorded it for the pilot, session singers re-recorded the vocals for the first season, and the Brady children themselves took over in later seasons. Even the name prompted debate. In a Television Academy interview, Barry Williams recalled that the network worried about the word “bunch” because of its associations with gangs and films.
The Addams Family
Some theme songs are remembered for their words. The Addams Family is remembered for its fingers. Composer Vic Mizzy had the tune worked out before the show premiered in 1964, complete with harpsichord and two-finger snaps, according to American Songwriter. He sang it himself, too, overdubbing his voice three times to sound like a group.
Mizzy also wrote the theme for Green Acres and continued composing music for film and television, as American Songwriter recounts. He died in 2009 at the age of 93. Plenty of people can still do the Addams Family snap without missing a beat.
Happy Days
The Happy Days theme is so closely tied to the show that it is easy to forget the series originally opened with Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.” In an interview with Goldmine, composer Charles Fox recalled that the producers initially chose that song and used the theme he had written with Norman Gimbel over the closing credits instead.
It became a hit in its own right. A 1976 recording by the duo Pratt & McClain reached No. 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and the days-of-the-week opening is still one of the most recognisable lines in television.
And many more
These are only a handful. Depending on where and when you grew up, your list might include the galloping theme from a Western, a jingle from a children’s program, or the opening of a cop show you weren’t really allowed to stay up for. Australian viewers might add the theme from a long-running local drama, the music from a favourite children’s program, or the opening of the evening news. Every family seems to have its own favourites, and its own arguments about whether a line goes one way or another.
Why it’s worth a sing
There’s something joyful about discovering that the words are still there after 50 years. Singing an old theme song can bring back the smell of the lounge room, the feel of the carpet and the voices of the people who watched with you.
It can also make a good family game. Play or hum the first few seconds of an old theme and see who can name the show. Then swap: let the grandchildren choose the themes from their favourite programs and see how many you know. It’s a light-hearted way to share a bit of your own childhood, and to learn something about theirs.
So next time the family gathers, try humming the first few notes of an old favourite and see who joins in. You may be surprised how many people, from grandparents to grandchildren, already know the tune.
