West Philadelphia, born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days … If you find yourself completing the end of this song in its entirety, you've fallen into the mystical trap too. What makes some shows more memorable than others? Obviously, their theme songs. If I'm ever walking with a group of friends and someone begins to sing this song, it reminds me of how Fresh Prince of Bel-Air continues to be a living and breathing entity in pop culture long after the plot's specifics about Carlton, Ashley, and Hilary Banks have disappeared.
Twenty years down the line, no one is going to be able to whip out the Grey's Anatomy opener with its queer composition of triangle dings and the pops a la Pop-O-Matic Trouble in the background. The relevance of Spongebob Squarepants, The Nanny, and Cheers, to name a few, lays in their catchy vignettes that sum up the entire plot in five seconds. If television executives forego this element of the opening, how will we be able to appreciate the show and shame our children with awkward renditions of, "she had style, she had flair, she was there, that's how she became the Nannnyyy!" Can television be great and remembered without a killer opening song? Perhaps, but this key ingredient can catapult a series into immortality.
It is not necessary for television shows to have a tremendous amount of originality in this department. Perhaps you take a popular song at the time (Dawson's Creek "I Don't Wanna Wait" by Paula Cole or Friends' "I'll be There for You" come to mind), and then let society run with it. For the rest of time, when that song is played on the radio, 40- and 25-year old women alike will turn to their cohorts and say, "Aww, I loved Dawson's Creek," with an accompanying melodramatic gesture.
The only exception to this theory is for shows that are preeminent in their field with snappy writing, a killer cast, and a revolutionary spin on a theme (like Seinfeld's take on nothingness, for example), you can do without these earworms. Instances like these are few and far between. Teen dramas and comedies will wedge their way into the public consciousness for now, but quotable lines only have so much sticking power.
The future of television looks exceedingly bleak without these opening numbers. Sure, there's epic drama in having a hard hitting opening scene followed by a flashing graphic of the show's title, but where's the grist for our mind's mill? What will we take with us into an advanced age when Mod ragers and classes in Carney are just distant memories? One thing is for certain, lines from the songs of Full House, Sister, Sister, and Gilmore Girls will follow me into eternity. Songs like these string us along for ages until we realize that we've inadvertently made these tunes immortal. Perhaps the Gilmore Girls Carol King mentality of "where you lead, I will follow," is more applicable than we realize.
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