A Pop Star Catalog of Classic TV Theme Songs
By Michael Jones | November 5, 2021
Whether you’re schlemieling and schlimazeling to Laverne & Shirley or thinking about those playgrounds on the west side of Philadelphia where The Fresh Prince of Bel Air spent most of his days, one thing is certain: TV theme songs are joyous little knickknacks scattered across the shelves of pop culture history.
Even better yet is when major music artists crossed over from the radio airwaves to the television airwaves. From Grammy winners to love song champions to even some of the most iconic voices in music history, so many shows saw their opening credits sung by some of the most beloved recording artists. Here’s a look at some famous ones, some not so famous ones, and some that may leave you scratching your head and going, “Wait, they sang that?!”
For the most part we’re sticking to songs integral to the TV shows themselves and weren’t separate pop hits (preemptive apologies to fans of Paula Cole or The Rembrandts!). Pop in those earbuds, and let’s get this playlist rolling.
Aretha Franklin: A Different World
Do you know if your parents love you? How about if they’ll stand behind you come what may? Well if so, you’ve got the first two verses of the theme song of A Different World, sung by one of the biggest stars in music history: Aretha Franklin. The Queen of Soul sang the theme song for this show from seasons 2-5. How did the show land one of the most famous women in the world to sing its theme song? Leave it to executive producer Debbie Allen. Allen told Vulture in 2018: “I knew her. So I actually called her. I wanted her, everybody did. So we put a call in to her and she said she would come. But she would not fly on a plane. So we had to charter her a bus with her people and have it catered with her favorite foods and she came all the way to California [from Detroit] and went into the recording studio and re-did that song for us and it became the iconic image of A Different World.” (One other fun fact about this theme song: Dawnn Lewis, who co-starred on this show, wrote it! She almost even sang it, but producers felt like it would be weird to have another actor sing the theme song given the show was a major vehicle for Lisa Bonet and could overshadow her.)
Kim Carnes: My Sister Sam
There’s no better soundtrack to panoramic shots of San Francisco than the raspy, soothing sounds of Kim Carnes. The “Bette Davis Eyes” crooner who also forms part of a vocal triumvirate (alongside Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis) that send “We Are the World” into the stratosphere, sings “Room Enough for Two,” the theme song behind CBS’s 1986-1988 sitcom My Sister Sam. “Room Enough for Two” is ostensibly about Sam (Pam Dawber) making room in her gorgeous San Francisco condo (with the best spiral staircase ever to appear on television) for her younger sister Patti (Rebecca Schaeffer) to live.
TLC: All That
If you’re an 80s kid you know Nickelodeon sketch comedy from You Can’t Do That On Television. But if you’re a 90s kid, you know it from All That, the sketch comedy masterclass that ran for a decade and was produced by two actors and writers (Dan Schneider and Brian Robbins) who hit it big on the sitcom Head of the Class. Girl group powerhouse TLC performed the theme song to this, recording it right as they released one of the best hip hop/R&B/pop albums of the decade, CrazySexyCool. Of course All That is also the show that launched the careers of Kenan Thompson and Amanda Bynes (among many others), but it’s theme song is an underrated 90s gem in a decade where theme songs (especially toward the latter half of the 90s) started to disappear from TV.
Al Jarreau: Moonlighting
Several times in the 1980s a TV theme song managed to climb its way up the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Mike Post did it with the theme to Hill Street Blues (a number 10 hit on the charts). Composer Jan Hammer infamously did it with the theme to Miami Vice (which went to number one and became the last instrumental number one of the 20th century). And Al Jarreau did this with his smooth jazz R&B theme to Moonlighting, the Cybill Shepherd/Bruce Willis pop culture juggernaut of the mid-to-late 80s. Jarreau’s theme (produced by legend Nile Rodgers) only hit 22 on the Hot 100 charts, but it skyrocketed up to the top of Billboard’s Adult Contemporary charts, reaching #1 in 1987.
Jennifer Warnes and Dusty Springfield: Growing Pains
One could make the argument that the theme song to Growing Pains, technically called “As Long As We Got Each Other” (but perhaps better known by just its opening verse, “Show me that smile, oooooooohhhhhhhhh show me that smile…”) is the best TV theme song of the entire 1980s. For seasons 2, 3, 5, and 7, the song was performed as a duet by songwriter BJ Thomas and love song powerhouse Jennifer Warnes. (Classic Jennifer Warnes dad joke: King Arthur made the members of his roundtable all wear watches set to Britain’s official clock. Yeah, guess you could say he needed the right time of the knight. Heyoo!) For season 4, however, Growing Pain’s producers swapped out Warnes and tagged in British diva Dusty Springfield, whose husky chops had recently starred in what NME called perhaps the greatest pop song in history, “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” a collab between Springfield and The Pet Shop Boys. Our preference for which version of the Growing Pains theme song slaps harder? A slight lean toward Dusty’s, but Warnes’s voice sounds amazing and she remains among the most underrated ballad hitmakers of the 70s & 80s.
Art Garfunkel: Brooklyn Bridge
CBS had a critical darling on their hands with the show Brooklyn Bridge, a 1991-1993 family show that starred Marion Ross after her Love Boat days. The show had a The Wonder Years vibe recalling the life of a Jewish American family in 1950s Brooklyn. The show won a Golden Globe for Best Comedy and was nominated for an Emmy in the same category. Its theme song, “Just Over the Brooklyn Bridge” oozes like hot butter in the microwave. Performed by Art Garfunkel in his signature Garfunkel tones, pictures of 1950s Brooklyn stroll across the screen during the opening credits in an homage to the days of Brooklyn when an apartment near the Brooklyn Bridge wouldn’t cost $4,500 a month.
Amy Grant: Sister Kate
One of the world’s most famous Christian pop stars singing the theme song to the show that made Jason Priestley a sex symbol? (I know most people think it was 90210 but come on, look at his flowing locks in this show and tell me you don’t want to hold his hand while walking down a sunset-kissed beach.) Right before Grant exploded onto the pop music scene with her iconic Heart in Motion, she did the theme song “Maybe an Angel” for the NBC show Sister Kate—a starring vehicle for Stephanie Beacham as a wise-cracking nun overseeing a group home of orphans. The hook of the song was the lyric “Maybe an angel is watching over you,” though no angels must have been watching this show because it was canceled after one season. But the show did gift us Jason Priestley’s hair, as well as an episode guest starring Milli Vanilli before their lip synching scandal sank their careers.
Billy Vera: Empty Nest
Perhaps Billy Vera’s bigger claim to TV fame came from Family Ties when his song “At This Moment” was used to capture the young teenage love of Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox) and his girlfriend Ellen Reed (Tracy Pollan). But Vera hit the TV theme song jackpot when in 1988 he crooned the song “Life Goes On” for the Richard Mulligan NBC show Empty Nest. A spin-off of The Golden Girls, Empty Nest originally filmed its pilot episode starring Rita Moreno and Paul Dooley, but the show was a clunker (prompting Rita Moreno to go on record and say it was one of the worst experiences of her professional life). It was then completely retooled and rewritten (only keeping one cast member, David Leisure, who played the next door neighbor) and became one of the staples of NBC’s dominant Saturday night line-up in the late 80s/early 90s. Life goes on, indeed.
The Waitresses: Square Pegs
Know what boys like? They like the theme song to 1982’s Square Pegs, performed by new wave favorite The Waitresses. But The Waitresses didn’t just perform the theme song (aptly titled “Square Pegs”). They also appeared in the pilot episode of this Sarah Jessica Parker/Amy Linker sitcom, as the band performing at a school dance. Their iconic Christmas song, “Christmas Wrapping,” gets a heavy feature in the Christmas episode, and the band Devo even eventually makes an appearance during an episode where character Muffy (played by Jami Gertz) has her Bat Mitzvah.
Gloria Loring: The Facts of Life
Okay, maybe the words “Gloria Loring” don’t make you think “pop star!” While it’s true Loring was much more well known for her turn on soap opera Days of Our Lives, she had a blockbuster 1986 love song called “Friends and Lovers” that went all the way to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and has been rocking tunes on TV for decades. When she was married to actor Alan Thicke, the two penned several theme songs together, including the themes to Diff’rent Strokes as well as The Facts of Life, the latter of which gives Loring’s voice the spotlight. You take the good, you take the bad, you take the rest and what you’re left with is one of the most well known TV theme songs in small screen history.
Bill Medley: Just the Ten of Us
If you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling, maybe try getting it back by listening to the theme song of Growing Pains spin-off Just the Ten of Us, sung by one half of the 60s love song duo, The Righteous Brothers. Bill Medley himself lends his bass-baritone to this 80s sitcom during a period where he echoed all across the pop culture zeitgeist. In the mid-to-late 80s Top Gun heavily featured “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,” and Ghost changed the face of pottery forever with “Unchained Melody.” Medley of course also joined with another person on this list—Jennifer Warnes—for one of the biggest-selling and award-winning duets of the 1980s, “I’ve Had the Time of My Life,” from the film Dirty Dancing. By the end of the decade, Medley’s voice was soaring higher than Jennifer Gray being lifted up to the heavens by Patrick Swayze.
Queen Latifah: Living Single
In a 90s kind of world, be glad you got your girls. If you know those theme song words, you almost certainly know Living Single, one of the most popular shows on the fledgling FOX network in the 90s. Before there was Friends there was Living Single, and in so many ways had Living Single gotten the same treatment that Friends got from networks and producers, the show might today be running 24 hours a day and watched in countless hotels around the country (as Friends is today). Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, Kim Fields, Erika Alexander were a powerhouse ensemble, and the theme song is hip hop excellence. You’ll never look at the Manhattan Bridge in NYC again without wanting to dance your face off in front of it.
Melissa Manchester: The Trials of Rosie O’Neill
Entirely possible that this drama had the best advertising tagline of any 90s show. It starred Sharon Gless as Fiona Rose “Rosie” O’Neill, a public defender in Los Angeles who was in the midst of a divorce from her philandering husband whom she shared a law firm with. The ad campaign was a picture of Gless as O’Neill with the caption: “I’m 43 and divorced. He got our law practice, the Mercedes, and the dog. It’s only fair that I should be angry. I really liked that dog.” BOOM. But if the witty ad campaign didn’t pull you in, try the theme song, “I Wish I Knew,” sung by pop star (and early Harlette for Bette Midler!) Melissa Manchester. Man, if you think Adele can ooze a tune to the notes of a piano, try Manchester who is in all her glory during this theme song.
Rita Coolidge: The Ellen Burstyn Show
It’s amazing more people don’t know about The Ellen Burstyn Show. Not only because it stars living legend and Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn, but because it featured showstopper Elaine Stritch as her mother and future showstopper Megan Mulally as her daughter. That’s probably because the show aired on Saturday nights on ABC in 1986 opposite NBC’s juggernaut line-up built around 227 and The Golden Girls. Had this show been scheduled better (and maybe not have had Lucille Ball’s Life With Lucy, lambasted by critics, as its lead-in), it could have been a staple for years. But alas, it only lasted half a season. In that time though it gave us a theme song, “Nothing in the World Like Love,” from 70s/80s Grammy winner Rita Coolidge. Worth listening to this theme song alone for the images of Elaine Stritch walking down the stairs dressed as a showgirl. Damn, what a loss this show didn’t last.
Know of some other pop stars over the years who gifted their voice for a TV theme song? Let us know in the comments! And if you’re craving more TV theme songs to liven up your life, head over to Spotify for a curated playlist of some of the best TV themes from the last few decades of the 20th century.
An unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie, Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.