FYI: TV THEMES
by
Strong Look,
07 March 2011
Essentially, there are only a few people you need to know in reference to kids TV themes of the 80’s and early 90’s, these guys get little credit for what are some of the catchiest tunes ever composed. Coming out of the 70’s cartoon music and its themes changed wildly from traditional orchestral underpinning to electronic and rock scores, these guys wrote pretty much all of em.
Lisa Lougheed – The Raccoons
Not only provided the voice of Lisa Raccoon but also wrote and performed much of its soundtrack; you’ll be familiar with ‘Run With Us’. A soundtrack album, her debut album; ‘Evergreen Nights’ was released on cassette and vinyl only in 1988 so damn, it’s pretty hard to find and when it appears it sells for at least $150. There are a few tracks are on youtube but other than that, unless you track down a copy, or someone is real cool…. The Raccoons stands out from other cartoon soundtracks for not referencing characters in it’s lyrics but rather reinforcing the narrative with mature emotional content!
Chuck Lorre – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Chuck Lorre is the guy who recently sparked Charlie Sheen's comeback, but FYI he also composed the soundtrack to 1987’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with another guy called Dennis Challen Brown before he went on to produce such shows as Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. Featuring great synth pads, charming ditzy melodies and up-tempo moments for the fight scenes and send kids wild, the theme tune was later parodied in Samurai Pizza Cats by Shuki Levy (see below), and apparently was up for release in the mid-90's.
Robert J Walsh – Transformers
While the theme tune was composed by Anne Bryant, who also penned hits for The Pointer Sisters and Jem and The Holograms. The score was due to this guy, in this clip of Transformers episode 51 ‘Auto-Bop’ ...
...you’ll find in the an instrumental version of ‘Cold Slither’ a track utilised by Cobra in a truly outrageous episode of G.I. Joe where subliminal mind-control messages are added to both the video and record album
His other credits include other Hasbro products GI Joe and My Little Pony, plus he also penned the very catchy theme to Muppet Babies and the soundtrack to Jennifer Anniston horror Leprechaun!
Harman and Kinder – Jem and The Holograms
Jem and The Holograms features so many hidden 80’s hits, the tracks were featured in the show as a cartoon music videos MTV style and released on cassette with the shows accompanying dolls, sung by Britta Phillips, collaborator and wife of Galaxie 500’s Dean Wareman.
Hits include –
Jem and The Holograms ‘I Got My Eye On You’
Jem and The Holograms ‘Beat This’
The Misfits ‘Universal Appeal’
Shuki Levy - Thundercats
Shuki Levy is the real mack; with over 130 TV themes on his CV, from the awesome vocoder glam-disco of Ulysses 31, through The Mysterious Cities of Gold, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Inspector Gadget, X-Men, and by 1994 non-cartoon hits Sweet Valley High and Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. He’s composed some of the most enduring and memorable songs ever written by anyone! here’s a playlist of his greatest hits
A lot of these themes were also released as singles, especially in France as Shuki Levy with Haim Saban had their own record label, part of the huge Saban Entertainment television production company responsible for many of these shows for which Levy composed the themes and scores for; other shows they produced included Kid N’ Play, Dragonball-Z and Goosebumps. HUGELY influential dude.
#fyi ‘Duck Tales’ was written by a guy called Mark Mueller, he also wrote similarly catchy theme to Rescue Rangers and ‘Crush’ by Jennifer Paige.