“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” uses “Temptation Sensation” by Hanz Keissling
Does a Netflix series count as a “TV show” these days? I’m going to assume that it does.
Netflix’s Grace and Frankie uses a cover of the Stealers Wheel song “Stuck in the Middle,” sung by Grace Potter.
HBO’s Boardwalk Empire used the song “Straight Up and Down” by The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
HBO’s The Wire used 5 different variants (one for each season) of Tom Waits’s “Way Down in the Hole.”
Too late to edit:
The HBO series Treme used John Boutté’s “Treme Song.”
Birds of a Feather (British Sitcom). What’l I Do? by Irving Berlin
“What’ll I do,
When you are far away…”
“Party of Five” used “Closer to Free” by the Waukesha band BoDeans
The spinoff “Time of Your Life” used the BoDeans cover version of “I’ve Just Seen a Face”
Brian
Wings used a tune written by some dude named Franz Schubert.
The British superhero series Misfits used “Echoes” by the Rapture.
Scrubs - “Superman” by Lazlo Bane.
This song originated from the soundtrack for The Tao of Steve (2000), then Zach Braff suggested the song to Scrubs producer Bill Lawrence, which began airing in 2001. The song did not actually appear on a Lazlo Bane album until 2002.
“Community” used a song called “At Least It Was Here” by a band called “The 88.”
Suddenly Susan: Beethoven’s Ode to Joy
Grace Under Fire: The Beatles’ Lady Madonna
Eyewitness News: the “Tar Sequence” theme from the film Cool Hand Luke
The Dating Game: Herb Alpert’s Spanish Flea
Smallville: Remy Zero’s Save Me
Wonderama: I Ain’t Down Yet from the film The Unsinkable Molly Brown
Cops “Bad Boys” by Inner Circle
“As Time Goes By” for the British sitcom of the same name.
In 1970, a UK song writer named Johnny Pearson wrote an instrumental for the BBC music library called Heavy Action.
In 1975, a little known American show called Monday Night Football chose it for it’s opening theme.
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“Chump Change” is one kick-ass tune. Cosby is listed as co-composer and it’s on the same album as “The Streetbeater,” which is the “Sanford and Son” theme, which doesn’t count here as it was on the show before it was on the album, so I’m not going to mention it.
The Matt Frewer sitcom Doctor, Doctor had as its theme the Young Rascals’ Good Lovin’.
And, of course, The Syncopated Clock was the theme of The Late Show.
W5 is a Canadian TV news magazine show. In the '70s and '80s its theme was part of Fool’s Overture by Supertramp.
Mason Williams’s, “Classical Gas,” was used on TV news shows:
British political / current affairs show Weekend World used Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain as the theme.
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How about a double from one show?
Very long running British pop music show (it went out weekly from 1964 until 2006) Top Of The Pops had various theme music choices along the way but the two best known were:
A version of the CCS version of Whole Lotta Love by Led Zepplin lasted most of the 1970s and in fact was reprised and used again from 1998 and 2003. Insert own comment about how Led Zepplin were themselves playing a version of…
Between 1981 and 1986 the show used a version of the Midge Ure / Phil (Thin Lizzy) Lynott song Yellow Pearl. Lynott was approached to write an original theme and he asked for stylistic guidance. When they said ‘Something like Yellow Pearl’ he suggested ‘Why not simply use Yellow Pearl?’
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