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Best TV Theme Songs

I couldn't stop at 5! The best theme songs ever on television? Look no further - CyberMonkeyDeathSquad delivers the definitive list! Think I'm wrong? I dare you to tell me I'm wrong!

You can find lots of so-called "Greatest TV Theme Songs" lists out there, but most of them seem to pick the song based on how much the reviewer liked the show.  "The Brady Bunch" theme?  Are you kidding me?  Decent enough lead in for a show, but you'd never listen to it in the car, would you?  Here's some TV theme songs that rock!

Composed by Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin, and performed by Frankie Laine, Rawhide is a classic western song with a bite.  How cool was it?  Cool enough for The Blues Brothers to do a cover, that's how cool. Or how about this - a cover by none other than Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys!


Vik Mizzy's theme song is definitely a little bare on the musical chops (he always worked on a tight budget, which also explains why he sang the theme song himself, overdubbing his own voice three times), but it's guaranteed to get you snapping your fingers.


Quincy Jones delivers a timeless classic - that great bass and guitar opening, with the funky sax intro - bringing a little soul to prime time TV.


The brilliance here is two-fold.  Write a song that explains the premise of the show, and then get two of the greatest bluegrass musicians of all time (Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs) to pick it out for you.  Aaaaaah - swimmin' pools . . . movie stars . . .


Season Two especially. The song is basically the same, but the Season Two version just rocks more!  Blaring horns, swinging surf guitar - let's call Butch Patrick and have a party! I tried to find a clip, but all I could find was Season 1, which just wasn't as cool.

Barney Miller was a decent police comedy, but the producers of the show should get a lifetime achievement award for the best theme song promoting the bass guitar.  Les Claypool has said this was the song that made him want to play bass.  Great cover versions can be heard every day at sound checks and Guitar Centers across the country.


This song would be rated higher if it weren't for the god-awful high-school band cover versions I had to listen to every year growing up. 


John Sebastian scored yet another #1 hit with this hip theme song.  The show isn't as good as you remember it, but the song gets better every time I hear it.


The great Jose Feliciano wrote and performed this song, which would have been an even bigger hit were it not for the untimely suicide of Freddie Prinze, effectively ending the show several episodes short of 100, the limit for most syndication deals.  Reportedly, Feliciano was so nervous that the producers would reject the song that he wrote a second song, which the producers also bought to use as the show's closing song.  To this day one of the only Latin flavored theme songs, and still one of the best. 


Granted, this is not the best theme song musically, and I tried to place it lower, but I just couldn't.  No theme song has better captured the premise of a series than this one.  Not only do we learn exactly why the castaways are on the island, we meet them all, at least after the first season, when the song was re-recorded to include The Professor and Mary Ann.  A little known fact is that Bob Denver insisted on re-doing the song to include the two cast members, and when producers refused, he used a contractual clause allowing him to choose where his name appears in the credits.  He insisted his name be moved to the end credits along with Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) and Russell Johnson (The Professor), and the producers caved in. 

The song sounds even better if you play it to the tune of Stairway to Heaven . . .


Does that count as one of the first ever mash-ups?

How could you leave Night Court off? That had a much better bass line than Barney Miller! - Anonymous Bass Player

For a wordless theme song, I have to go with the original Star Trek theme