Slap Bass, a Bass Recorder and a VHS Tape: The Stories Behind 16 Theme Songs and Scores
A good theme tells you which show is on before a single character appears. Many of the best-known ones were not planned that way. Some were chosen by a cast vote, some were built from odd instruments, and one game's sound effects were recorded with whatever was lying around. These are the music stories we found while writing the quizzes on this site.
Themes that came about by accident
The Office. Producer Greg Daniels let the cast vote between four possible themes. The winner was Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky", but the drama LAX was already using it, so the show went with an original track by Jay Ferguson, performed by The Scrantones. See the Office quiz.
The Big Bang Theory. Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady saw Barenaked Ladies play in Los Angeles. Singer Ed Robertson, who had just read Simon Singh's book Big Bang, made up a rap about the origin of the universe on stage. They asked him to write the theme, and he only agreed after hearing that they had not asked anyone else. The unaired first pilot had used Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" instead. Years later, court papers showed former bandmate Steven Page claiming he had been promised 20 percent of the theme's earnings. See the Big Bang Theory quiz.
How I Met Your Mother. The theme is a 12-second clip of "Hey, Beautiful" by The Solids, a band that includes the show's creators, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. See the How I Met Your Mother quiz.
Themes built from unusual sounds
Seinfeld. Jonathan Wolff wanted an instantly recognisable "audio signature" rather than a melodic sitcom theme. He built it from processed slap-bass samples, finger snaps and mouth noises, and wrote variations to fit the rhythm of each episode. When the network asked for something more conventional, Larry David refused. See the Seinfeld quiz.
The Mandalorian. Jon Favreau wanted the show to sound "a little grittier, a little edgier" than John Williams' film scores. Ludwig Göransson built the main theme from a bass recorder, digitally manipulated to sound futuristic, then added guitars, piano, drums, synths and a 70-piece orchestra. See the Mandalorian quiz.
Breaking Bad. Dave Porter avoided a Western orchestra, building the score from instruments from around the world, found sounds, field recordings, synths and electric guitar. He said the resonator guitar in the main title was the one conventionally Western sound. See the Breaking Bad quiz.
The Walking Dead. Instead of a full theme song, Bear McCreary used a short repeating string figure. He said the trick was that viewers start hearing it before the main title begins, so they know it is coming. See the Walking Dead quiz.
Avatar: The Last Airbender. Jeremy Zuckerman and Benjamin Wynn started out doing both music and sound together, then split the work, with Wynn taking over sound design. The score uses instruments such as the guzheng, pipa and duduk. See the Avatar quiz.
A game scored with household objects
Minecraft. The German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, known as C418, made both the music and the sound effects. Real recordings of grass did not work, so the sound of walking on grass came from lightly touching VHS tape. The spider is a fire-hose recording pitched until it sounded "like a weird spider was talking to you". The creeper's famous fuse-like hiss was a placeholder matchstick sound that worked so well it was kept. He made the music deliberately repetitive to help players relax or concentrate. See the Minecraft quiz.
One song, many versions
The Wire. Every season opens with Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole", from his 1987 album Franks Wild Years, but each uses a different recording: The Blind Boys of Alabama, Waits himself, The Neville Brothers, DoMaJe (five Baltimore teenagers) and Steve Earle. Earle also appears on screen as Walon, a recovering addict. See the Wire quiz.
Songs used against the scene
Squid Game. The first "Red Light, Green Light" massacre plays over a cover of "Fly Me to the Moon", arranged by composer Jung Jae-il, who also scored Parasite. The romantic lyrics were meant to clash with the killing. For "Way Back Then", heard as the children play, Jung used instruments from his own primary-school days, such as recorders and castanets. See the Squid Game quiz.
Money Heist. The Professor and Berlin sing the Italian anti-fascist song "Bella ciao" before the first heist. Writer Javier Gómez Santander brought it in after listening to it at home to cheer himself up, and it became a European summer hit in 2018 because of the series. The theme song, "My Life Is Going On", was written and sung by Cecilia Krull, who was inspired by the character Tokyo. See the Money Heist quiz.
Final songs with conditions attached
The Sopranos. The series ends on Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'". The band allowed it on one condition: the scene could contain no violence or deaths. The opening theme, "Woke Up This Morning", is the "Chosen One Mix" by the British band Alabama 3, and almost every episode closes with a different song picked by David Chase. See the Sopranos quiz.
Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan chose Badfinger's "Baby Blue" for the final scene himself, after it came to mind while he was writing the finale. The New Yorker read it as Walt's love song to his blue product.
Old songs brought back
Stranger Things. Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" shot back up the charts after it was used in season four, as did Metallica's "Master of Puppets". Limahl's "The NeverEnding Story" had a similar revival after season three. The synth score is by Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon of the band Survive, whom the Duffers contacted after hearing their music in the 2014 film The Guest. See the Stranger Things quiz.
Scores that grow with the story
Game of Thrones. Ramin Djawadi wrote the first season's music about ten weeks before the premiere and gave each major house, and some characters, their own theme. Daenerys's theme began on a single cello and grew more complex each season. See the Game of Thrones quiz.
The Lord of the Rings. Howard Shore wrote early versions of the Shire and Frodo themes before filming began and ended up with somewhere between 85 and 110 leitmotifs across the trilogy, the largest catalogue of leitmotifs in cinema history. The closing song, "Into the West", was a tribute to Cameron Duncan, a young filmmaker befriended by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh who died of cancer in 2003. See the Lord of the Rings quiz.
What makes a theme stick
Few of these themes come from a conventional brief. They were shaped by the creators' personal taste (Gilligan's "Baby Blue", the creators' own band on How I Met Your Mother), by a sound nobody expected (slap bass, a bass recorder, VHS tape), or by a deliberate clash between music and picture. A theme becomes memorable when it does something no other show would do.
Sources: the English Wikipedia articles on The Office (American TV series), The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Seinfeld, The Mandalorian, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead (TV series), Avatar: The Last Airbender, Minecraft, The Wire, Squid Game, Money Heist, The Sopranos, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings (film series), as cited in each quiz's answer key.