HBO shows typically have long theme songs, which is ok except for in the case of True Blood. I really don’t like that song and the opening sequence graphics that accompany it are equally loathesome.
I can also get on board with the hatred of the Friends song and the music of Grey’s Anatomy.
I’m not sure if this counts or not, but Vampire Diaries. It’s just non-stop, too intense, inappropriate to the scene stuff. But I might just be watching the preview. I wouldn’t know. I always mute it after a few seconds.
It sounds like a long fanfare. If you listen closely, there is some complexity in the composition.
Sorta John Williamsish. The melody is repetitious though, and not very good.
Williams must have need money at the time!
I think a theme song which repeats the same thing over and over again is perfectly fitting for Lost in Space.
I suppose the line that really annoys me is “And the boys go into business, and marry and raise a family, in boxes made of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same.” I mean, what’s wrong with raising a family? What’s wrong with working to provide for them? My crack about communes and wood carvings was aimed at what I believe to be the subtext of the song, that if you’re not living the bohemian lifestyle in a house made out of hemp you’re a conformist and a square and “part of the problem”, whatever that problem actually is.
To my mind, this one is much, much worse…
The point is that they all have the same goals and aspirations (and race, religion, wealth, etc.) and make the same choices. It’s that they want to live in a place where they don’t have to interact with people who are different than they are.
I’m not saying that the song isn’t condescending. I’m just trying to make it clear what it’s being condescending about.
This will have no effect on your reaction to the song, but my point is that you’ve got the cultural touchstone backwards. It’s not that it disdains people who aren’t lining in a house made of hemp. It disdains people who leave the city with its diversity of life and its immediacy of interpersonal experience to go live in a place where everyone is the same, white middle-class, etc. It’s not a hippie-living-in-a-commune-made-of-hemp song. It’s a a beatnik-smoking-cigarettes-in-a-cellar-coffee-house-in-Washington-Square song.
Exactly my thought as soon as I saw the composer credit.
That could be, but it doesn’t make that tune any less annoying.
I have to agree! Williams did the music for another show that I really liked, but I can’t locate a clip of the theme: Checkmate.
I loathe the opening to The Big Bang Theory. I enjoy the show, but I have to DVR it so I can fastforward through that godawful song.
I hate, hate, hate the opening theme for the current show ‘New Girl’!
The good news is, it’s very short. The bad news is, it’s so short that it gets into your head even before you have a chance to madly scramble for the ‘mute’ button on the remote…
I love “How I Met Your Mother”. Hate the theme song.
The “This is a sad scene” music from Stargate: Universe. It’s like the guy playing the piano would walk off and make a sandwich between each note.
Heh, really. I like that they didn’t really bother with a theme, its basically just a five second blurb. Even themes I like get pretty boring after the fifth or sixth repetition (especially if your watching through a bunch of episodes of a series in one sitting).
I think they actually made the New Girl theme even shorter in the last few episodes.
Big Bang Theory and HIMYM have great theme songs!!! I don’t know what’s up with you guys if you hate them.
Friends is annoying but not the worst, surely.
In fact, I can’t think of any theme songs I absolutely hate. I do hate the law and order CHUNG CHUNG sound though. Scares me and I will never watch the show just because of that.
Family Guy. It gets suck in my head, even just thinking about it. Ugh, there it goes again! NoooOOooo!
Reminds me of the Rush song Subdivisions. Google the lyrics.
Acsenray - Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
I tend to be forgiving of hippy-ish or beatnik sentiments, but this makes me hate the song even more. This point about people who live in suburbia is really trite. People who live in suburbia are just people trying to live life comfortably. Maybe their goals and tastes are somewhat bland and safe, but soul-deadening? What bullshit.
Fortunately I have not had to endure much Desperate Housewives in my life, but I hate the fucking plucking meandering aimless music that’s always played in the scenes that are supposed to be funny or clever or … really just all the time. It’s just fucking random string plucks throughout the entire show.
I also hate the theme music from community. I can’t point to why it’s particularly terrible, it’s just a constant stream of indistinct spray fart of music.
CHECKMATE with Sebastian Cabot. I remember when it was on TV, even though I was only five years old at the time. I could never figure out what that swirling mess in the opening credits was supposed to be, and I found Cabot (who, I think, played an English butler, pre Mr French) a kind of creepy character.
This link is to the teaser from one show; the theme music is at the end. There’s at least one “old TV theme” collection on YouTube that has the opening credits to CHECKMATE as well…
