Column 3: Theme Songs
What do the following phrases have in common? “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a faithful trip…” “Here’s the story, of a lovely lady…” “Whatever happened to predictability, the milk man, the paper boy, evening TV…” Anyone who has ever turned on a television probably identified these as lyrics to extremely recognizable TV show theme songs. But you probably could’ve known the answer without ever having turned on a television—that’s how ingrained into popular culture these theme songs are. Two of the above theme songs are brought to you by the 1960s (Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, respectively), the decade that ushered in the scripted sitcom and singlehandedly built the television industry. American families gave up radios in favor of television, and by the late 1950s, weekly sitcoms were being broadcast into homes all over the country. A family in California watched and[...]