The 1980s were something of a golden age for television theme songs. In decades prior, the theme music was either a pleasant melody that played over the opening credits (such as I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show), or they explained the premise of the series as in The Brady Bunch and The Beverly Hillbillies. By the time we reached the 80s, MTV had revolutionized television so much that everything else being broadcast seemed tame and boring by comparison. Therefore, theme music evolved to be more exciting and to introduce the tone of the show rather than introduce the concept and players.
This resulted in earworms that got stuck in your head for days, or tunes that were so incredible they became chart-topping hits. Depending on your age, you likely have a fondness for several of the iconic theme songs of the decade and can probably hum or sing them from memory. The TV theme song all but vanished during the early years of the 21st Century in preference to 30-second titles that set the mood before cutting right back to the action.
Now that streaming dominates the entertainment landscape, this lost art is starting to make a comeback, but nothing will ever be as iconic and memorable as the themes of the 80s. Therefore, we’ve decided to celebrate the best of the best. While there may be others out there that didn’t make the list, there can be no doubt that these songs helped define the decade they were conceived in.
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10 Miami Vice
NBC
Composed by Jan Hammer, “Crockett’s Theme” (as it is titled) from Miami Vice is just about as quintessentially 80s as you can get. Fast-paced and thrilling, this electronic track has a kinetic energy that really moved. When paired with quick cuts of Miami life that look like they came straight out of a music video, then you have the perfect introduction to a series about cool cops with wonderfully hip (for the time) style and attitude. The theme was so popular that an extended version was actually released as a single that played on the radio and MTV. It even spent 22 weeks on the Billboard charts, eventually peaking at number one.
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9 Family Matters
ABC
Sure, there were a ton of action and adventure shows throughout the 80s, but there was also an influx of family sitcoms, many of which are still considered classics. Starting life as a spinoff of Perfect Strangers, Family Matters grew into a genuinely funny, heartwarming, and inventive series about a family in Chicago tackling everyday problems and dealing with their annoying, nerdy neighbor Steve Urkel. While the show eventually gravitated to telling more ridiculous and absurd stories based around Steve and his quirky inventions, there was a long stretch where it focused solely on the kinds of topics discussed in its incredible opening song, like how love can hold a family together in even the darkest of times. Written by the mastermind behind several sitcoms of the era, Jesse Frederick, this ballad about coming together and acceptance is still inspiring (and addicting) to this day. The second that melody kicks in, you can’t help but crank up the volume and sing along.
8 MacGyver
The series MacGyver is inherently silly with all its contrived ways of having the main character get out of impossible situations by fashioning tools out of mundane objects, but that’s perfect because the 80s were something of a silly decade in the United States. It was a time of ludicrous excess and horribly misplaced optimism paired with a kind of innocent naivety that only in retrospect do we see how damaging such a worldview is. That is why this theme composed by Randy Edelman is so perfect: it’s big, it’s fun, and it’s a bit corny. It sells the whimsy of the series perfectly by setting the tone. It invites you to leave all your baggage at the door and give yourself over to the exploits of a man who should have been dead dozens of times, but always keeps kicking because of his brilliance, ingenuity, and good humor. Put this music over anything, and it immediately becomes fun.
7 Perfect Strangers
Speaking of misplaced optimism and naivety, Perfect Strangers was a series about a childlike man from Mypos named Balki living with his distant cousin Larry in Chicago. Everything is new and exciting to Balki, while Larry is a bit more jaded and conservative. Just like Family Matters, the theme song was co-written by Jesse Frederick (this time collaborating with Bennett Salvay), and it gives us insight into the mindsets of both characters. Larry and Balki share a firm belief in the American dream (which was very common at the time) and see their lives as being full of potential that no one can stop. It plays into the more innocent and oblivious side of committing yourself to hard work and determination, without any understanding of the realities of the corporate world. Besides that, it’s another great ballad that one can’t help but belt from the top of their lungs when hearing it.
6 Knight Rider
The only problem with the theme to Knight Rider is the fact that a narrator explains the premise of the series while it’s playing. Although simple, the beat is so infectious that you could easily listen to it for over a minute with cool visuals of KITT (the car in the series) driving across the desert and David Hasselhoff looking smooth in his leather jacket with absolutely no context and be perfectly content. Composed by Stuart Phillips, this is an excellent example of a song almost being too awesome for the show it was written for. While there’s a lot of suspense and action in the series, almost nothing can live up to just how incredible that theme music is. A testament to its power is the fact that rapper Busta Rhymes samples it for his single “Turn It Up/Fire It Up” to legendary effect.
5 The Golden Girls
Originally written by Andrew Gold in 1978, the Cynthia Fee cover of “Thank You for Being a Friend” was used as the theme to the iconic sitcom The Golden Girls in 1985. Despite being conceived of in the previous decade, the song fits the 80s like a glove. Although we’ve taken every opportunity to point out the faults inherent in the time, there were still several people who found peace and comfort (or desperately needed it) during this turbulent decade and this song leans into that with a vengeance. Like many sitcoms (especially later on in the 90s), The Golden Girls presented a group of people the audience could aspire to either be or to know. The song tells them to relax, settle in, and have a great time with their friends Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia.
4 Magnum, P.I.
CBS
If any TV show theme could give “Crockett’s Theme” a run for its money in terms of cool factor and excitement, it’s the theme to the Tom Selleck classic Magnum, P.I. It doesn’t waste a second before kicking things off with a fast riff that leads to strings, and it keeps barreling forward. If a kid had this song recorded on a cassette tape, they could easily pop it in their Walkman and run around their yard imagining they were as effortlessly cool and charming as Thomas Magnum, and wish they’d grow up to have a mustache half as epic. While it doesn’t retain the crossover appeal as the Knight Rider theme, this Ian Freebairn-Smith composition still rocks to this day.
3 Growing Pains
When it comes to sentimental family sitcom themes, they don’t come any sappier than “As Long As We Got Each Other,” better known as the theme to Growing Pains. It’s easy to look back and feel nostalgic about the B.J. Thomas song now, but what’s incredible is it somehow made you feel nostalgic at the time as well. There’s an intangible affectionate element to the song that just makes you feel like reexamining your life and appreciating what you have. Of course, most of that comes from the lyrics, which are pretty explicit about only needing love in your life, but it’s also the mood of the song. Listening to it just weaves a spell on you that says everything will be all right.
2 Dallas
Although it originally premiered in 1978, the television series Dallas was on the air throughout the entirety of the 1980s, coming to an end in 1991. Therefore, it both influenced the decade while being influenced by it at the same time. The opening to the series features shots of Dallas, Texas geography with split screens of the show’s stars, which is a very 1970s thing to do. However, the fact that the series was about big business, corporate greed, and feuding families, personified all the biggest issues of the 80s, and the big and bold theme music composed by Jerrold Immel perfectly captured that.
1 Cheers
How exactly does the theme song to Cheers define the 80s? The opening lines say it all, “Making your way in the world today takes everything you got.” This was a decade of unlimited possibilities for the rich and the beginning of a rat race for everyone else. As the middle class slowly began to shrink, Americans who grew up in a society they believed was designed to give everyone an equal chance suddenly had to work longer and harder just to keep their head above water. Of course, this trend has only continued over the last 40 years, but at the time, it was easy to believe that all you had to do was keep working hard and you’ll make it in the big leagues. To help you cope with the constant grind, as Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart-Angelo wrote in this classic song, you wanted to go someplace where you can forget all your worries — someplace “where everybody knows your name.”
