The top two are so close. It’s virtually impossible to pick.
10. Married With Children: Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage…It came on late at night always after something I was watching just ended. I’d barely ever watch an episode, but I’d always wait for the theme song to get over before I changed the channel.
9. Hey Dude: It’s a little wild and a little strange, when you make a home out on the range…A Nickelodeon property (just like number 4), but still deserving of a top ten spot. The base in the guys voice at the end. Classic.
8. Drew Carey Show: Cleveland rocks, Cleveland rocks!…This show actually had a couple of different theme songs, both pretty good. The show itself wasn’t my cup of tea.
7. Full House: Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, there’s a heart, (there’s a heart) and a hand to hold onto…The perfect scenes of the weird family dynamic, all of them running up and down in a field or park in San Francisco, then stopping to pause and smile for their individual credit shots. So natural. The Olsen Twins: Not cute and overrated, been saying it my whole life.
6. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: I whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said fresh and had the dice in the mirror, if anything I would say that this cab was rare but I thought nah forget get yo home to Bel-Air!…I think everyone in 6th grade that I ran with had this song memorized. Only network sitcom with a rap intro that I’m aware of. How Will Smith made it out of this show to become known as a credible actor and rapper amazes me.
5. Gilligans Island: A three hour tour, A three hour tour…Probably should be higher, but this is a loaded category. I actually participated in a recreation of this as an actor in Walt Disney World when I was younger. Nailed it too.
4. Salute Your Shorts: But the thing that lasts forever, are our dear friendships…Another great Nickelodeon show with a theme song that was actually sung by the entire cast, and taped like an individual episode. Bobby Budnick, the camp rebel, had the best line each time, substituting it makes me wanna fart, for I hope we never part. All time classic.
3. Saved By The Bell: I’m at the corner just in time to see the bus fly by! It’s alright cause I’m saved by the bell…I’ve seen every episode at least 5 times and often enjoy Saved By The Bell trivia with my Missoula friends. No rules, sporadic, and questions can be asked at any time or place. Who didn’t want to be Zach Morris and who didn’t want to marry Kelly Kapowski?
2. Golden Girls: And if you threw a party, inviting everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say thank you for being a friend…Oh man. I just had to go to youtube and play it after I typed that sentence it’s so good. Could easily be number one.
1. Growing Pains: Baby rain or shine, all the time, we got each other, sharing the laughter and love. I honestly wanted to type out the lyrics to the entire song. I couldn’t decide which stanza to go with. Such an inspiration in my life. That’s why it takes the top spot. I sang it with my roommate and all of his friends in college. Pretty much every time we all got together and the beverages started flowing we’d break it out at some point. I remember burning a cd with nothing but that song over and over. 101 tracks on that disc. It turns out 14 and 16 years later I would use it to rock my kids to sleep. Over and over again I would sing it to them. And they’re both better off for it. I’m sure future science will agree.
Added note: As I was writing this I just kept picturing actual aspiring, or established, musicians going into the recording studio to sing some of these theme songs. That vision is hilarious to me.
