Daniel O'Donnell teasing Ireland's most excitable Mammies? It's pure filth.Don’t Tell the Bride that he’d prefer a hoolie down the dump.If it turned up scrawled in blood on the walls of a pop producer’s house, I would not be surprised. Anyway, Hanna Barbera’s shameless generational cash-in needed a suitably hip slice of pop music and got it in the shape of “Scooby Dooby Doo, Where are You?” a meaningless piece of beatnik gibberish if ever there was one. It’s a shame that the Saturday Evening Post never sent Joan Didion to report on and philosophise about gluttonous canine burn-out Scooby Doo and his hippy chums as the 1960s slithered into the ’70s and they travelled American in a van investigating “ghosts” (The only “ghost” here, as Didion might observe, is that of “America”). The otherwise excellent Handmaid’s Tale, for example, forgoes a credit sequence when it would actually be a relief to have just 30 seconds of Offred beating up the tools of the patriarchy while someone sang “na na na na na na na na na HANDMAID’S TALE! Na na na na HANDMAID’S TALE etc.” Scooby Doo Nothing says “Your favourite show is starting!” quite like having someone singing the name of that programme repeatedly over speedy 12-bar-blues while cartoon versions of the hero punch baddies. Each week Will Smith would act out and rap the circumstances of his move from rough and ready West Philadelphia to the riches of Bel Air, making an eloquent case for wealth redistribution that neither the show nor America ever quite delivered on. The Fresh Prince of Bel Airwas an exquisite example of the genre.
Yes, ’twas far from binge-watching or following a basic plot we were rared, apparently. Episodes would begin with the programme-makers basically pitching the show again to that era’s amnesiac TV audience. Once upon a time programmes told you their basic premise in song every week. I have selected some interesting examples for discussion. It got me thinking of the importance of theme music and intro credits and how they trigger a Pavlovian drool response in telly fans. Derbyshire was the unheralded genius who arranged Ron Grainger’s Ron Grainger’s Doctor Who scoreinto the sort of groundbreaking electronica befitting a time-travelling space-granddad who fought interstellar pepper-pots and the laws of physics. So, without further delay, scroll down for a list of some of the most memorable cartoon theme songs from our childhood.This week Delia Derbyshire was honoured with a posthumous PhD from Coventry University for her amazing work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Either way, I'm incredibly grateful for it. Perhaps it was because so many '80s New Waves greats had settled down enough to try their hand at composing (we hear you Mark Mothersbaugh and Danny Elfman) and we '90s kids got to reap the musical benefits. And not only did they accurately define a story or atmosphere, but these quality themes that have such a high re-listen rate all seemed to coincide within that era.
Because, for your own nostalgic purposes, I've rounded up some iconic '90s cartoon themes, some of which practically upstaged the rest of the whole damn series.įrom the songs that spelled out an entire series to the tunes that showed you an entire world, it's all here. Even now, you could flock to YouTube to relive that simpler time. There are so many unforgettable cartoon theme songs of the '90s that you'd watch the series just to be greeted by those dulcet tones.
There was no greater thrill on a Saturday morning than hearing the opening chords of your favorite animated series.