Songs

Election obsession fever has got me good (but it’s socially acceptable this time around, so I’m OK), so I was looking for a YouTube clip to fill time rather than actually blogging. I came up with this cool YouTube of Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye, always a good cheerer-upper despite the sad fates of both the singers. But somehow that got me thinking TV-related thoughts, about the way music is used in television, or should be used.

There’s a site that allows you to find out what was the # 1 song on the Billboard charts on any given day, so you can find out what the most popular song was when you were born, when you got married, the day Valerie Harper got fired from Valerie, and other essential milestones like that.

How long has it been since there was a show with a theme song that explained the premise? I can’t think of any since The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Nanny in the ’90s, and while both of those themes were terrific, there has really been nothing much since then. (Even British sitcoms, which have longer running times and might actually have time for a full-length theme song, historically tend to have shorter intros than American shows. I could never fully understand that.) I’m sure there have been some I’ve missed, and I’m sure someone will fill me in on the ones I’ve missed, but that kind of theme song is certainly out of fashion, even more so than theme songs in general. If a show absolutely needs to fill us in on the premise, it will do so with narration, like Arrested Development did, but not with lyrics.

Until I read the comments on Noel Murray’s great “Commentary Tracks of the Damned” piece on The Hottie and the Nottie, I did not realize that the perfectly attractive person who played the supposed “Nottie,” Christine Lakin, was the third girl on Step By Step. (Aka “The Brady Bunch, only nastier and sappier at the same time.”) Everybody hates the whole “Hollywood Ugly” convention where pretty people are presented as ugly wallflowers. It was one thing for her to be presented as a wallflower compared to Staci Keanan and Angela Watson, but expecting us to believe she’s less attractive than Paris Hilton is utterly insane and stupid. Much like The Hottie and the Nottie is utterly insane and stupid.

Starpulse presents The top 10 corniest theme songs of the ’80s.