Ah, that reminds me: “For the Love of Money”, by the O’Jays, used for The Apprentice.
HBO’s Not Necessarily The News originally used the opening guitar riff from Eric Clapton’s “Motherless Children” for its theme.
Or they get rights for a song that has been written independently of the show but just has not received wide release.
The Netflix animated comedy “F is for Family” uses Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love.”
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver uses Valley Lodge’s “Go”.
Freaks and Geeks, which used Pat Benatar’s Bad Reputation, which was a perfect fit.
I remember them using music from The Dregs a lot too.
The British TV series Coupling uses a cover of “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” which was originally recorded (in English) by Desi Arnaz in 1948.
Pat Benatar?! How the hell did that happen? It’s of course Joan Jett
Two short-lived shows: Primrose Lane was the theme of Henry Fonda’s The Smith Family, and Easy Street was the theme of the Loni Anderson/Jack Elam sitcom of the same name.
They used at least two versions, I think they changed after season 1.
edit
Sorry didn’t see your post.
You might want to narrow that down a bit, as there are quite a few songs by that name (and even some lawsuits between versions).
The Charmed version is by Love Spit Love. The same version had been made for The Craft and featured heavily in the marketing for that movie. Oddly, even though the song starts with “I am the son” both Charmed and the Craft are about females practicing witchcraft.
WWF Saturday Night’s Main Event, the original 80’s version used “Obsession” by Animotion as it’s theme, but it was used in such a way they never got to any of the lyrics when it played. I didn’t even know it was a real song until a few years ago when it came on the radio. Sadly, they’ve replaced it with a later, WWE owned SNME theme in the versions they’ve put on the WWE Network.
Monday Night Raw has used a lot of different themes, a few WWE made, most pre-existing, but the ones most known outside of use as a Raw theme would have to be “Burn It To The Ground” by Nickleback and “Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson. “Beautiful People” was also used for Smackdown’s theme, and for a lot longer than it was used for Raw’s theme (which I believe was only a few weeks).
Raw’s precursor, Prime Time Wrestling used “Jump” by Van Halen as it’s closing theme for a while.