The Song Planner

Theme Songs / Title Themes / Jingles

familyStarted c. 1926Peak 1950-1968; 1975-1992; 2005-2015Last big hit still active

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Stage / Screen / Soundtrack → Theme Songs / Title Themes / Jingles

Short, sticky identity music built to brand a thing in seconds, then get out of the way. The palette is whatever the era can afford and the medium demands: a swaggering big-band brass shout for a variety show, harpsichord and finger-snaps for a spooky sitcom, an eight-bit arpeggio looping under a jumping plumber, an orchestral fanfare swelling behind a network logo, or four sung words over a hamburger. Tempos run brisk and hooks arrive fast, because the whole job is recognition — a melody, a riff, or a three-note sting your ear files under a specific show, game, character, or brand and recalls instantly forever after. Texturally it ranges from full orchestra to a single synth patch, but the craft is constant: maximum memorability in minimum time, engineered to survive endless repetition without wearing out. Whether it runs thirty seconds over opening credits or three notes behind a logo, it exists to make you feel you already know what's coming.

History

The form predates television: the first singing radio commercial, a barbershop-quartet spot for Wheaties, aired Christmas 1926 and proved a tune could sell better than a pitch. Radio drama gave characters and programs their own signature cues, and when television arrived the convention came with it. Through the 1950s and '60s composers like Walter Schumann (Dragnet), Vic Mizzy (The Addams Family), and Earle Hagen built the American TV-theme vocabulary, while Paul Henning's "explain-the-premise" songs narrated a show's whole setup in a chorus. Advertising's golden age ran parallel, jingles from Coca-Cola, Oscar Mayer, and Alka-Seltzer lodging in the culture through the '50s-'80s. The 1980s brought the sung-pop TV theme to its peak — Cheers, Fresh Prince — even as Japan built a separate empire of anime openings and Koji Kondo's 1985 Super Mario Bros. cues founded game-theme composition. Sports and news scoring matured too, John Williams writing NBC's news and football themes. By the 2000s the long sung theme was fading, but sonic branding surged the other way: McDonald's five-note "I'm Lovin' It," Netflix's "ta-dum," Intel's chime — the jingle compressed to an audio logo, the family alive as ever.

The sub-genre landscape

The defining core is the screen-credit lane. Theme Song, Title Theme, Main Theme, Opening Theme, and TV Theme Song are effectively the family's spine — the music most people picture when they hear "theme." Sitcom Theme sharpens that to its most beloved edge (the sung, premise-explaining chorus), while Cartoon Theme Song and Anime Opening are the children that grew into worlds of their own, the latter now arguably outweighing its parent globally. Game Main Theme is the youngest core lane and one of the most vital, born the moment cartridges could hold a hook.

Alongside these sit the commercial lanes, which are core in their own right rather than peripheral: Jingle and Commercial Jingle are the oldest strain of all, and their modern descendants — Audio Logo and Logo Sting — are where the whole family is trending, identity compressed from a chorus to a chime. News Theme and Sports Theme are specialist but firmly established broadcast traditions.

The genuinely peripheral spin-offs are the narrative-function tags: Closing Theme, Character Theme, Villain Theme, Love Theme, and Franchise Theme describe how a cue is deployed inside a score more than a distinct compositional lane — useful labels, but shading toward soundtrack cue-writing rather than the standalone identity-music that defines the family. Traced through its children, the family runs from 1920s jingle to golden-age TV theme to anime and game hook to today's audio logo.

Sub-genres in this family

20 sub-genres

Anime OpeningAudio LogoCartoon Theme SongCharacter ThemeClosing ThemeCommercial JingleFranchise ThemeGame Main ThemeJingleLogo StingLove ThemeMain ThemeNews ThemeOpening ThemeSitcom ThemeSports ThemeTheme SongTitle ThemeTV Theme SongVillain Theme

Defining artists

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Essential listening

  • Theme from Mission: Impossible(1967) — Lalo SchifrinSpotifyYouTube
  • The Addams Family Theme(1964) — Vic MizzySpotifyYouTube
  • Super Mario Bros. Theme (Ground Theme)(1985) — Koji KondoSpotifyYouTube
  • Where Everybody Knows Your Name (Cheers Theme)(1982) — Gary PortnoySpotifyYouTube
  • The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Theme)(1990) — DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh PrinceSpotifyYouTube
  • A Cruel Angel's Thesis(1995) — Yoko TakahashiSpotifyYouTube
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Sources

  • Wikipedia and classicthemes.com listings of 1950s-60s American TV theme composers (Vic Mizzy, Earle Hagen, Walter Schumann) and the 'explain-the-premise' theme tradition
  • Branding Strategy Insider and The Drum surveys of the most influential U.S. advertising jingles since 1948, including the 1926 Wheaties radio jingle origin
  • Wikipedia entry on Koji Kondo and the Super Mario Bros. theme (1985), including its National Recording Registry induction
  • Wikipedia entries on 'Cha-La Head-Cha-La' (1989, Hironobu Kageyama) and 'A Cruel Angel's Thesis' (1995, Yoko Takahashi)
  • Wikipedia 'NFL on NBC music' and Soundtrack.Net coverage of John Williams' NBC News and Sunday Night Football themes
  • Wikipedia and garyportnoy.com on 'Where Everybody Knows Your Name' (Cheers theme, 1982, Gary Portnoy)