Catchy tunes

10 intro songs from TV that made history!

Credit: Glenn Carstens-Peters

Hundreds of TV series air every year, each with its own theme song, but few manage to stay on everyone’s minds long after they’ve ended. Let’s take a look at 10 theme songs so iconic that they can be recognized instantly!

Mission: Impossible

Credit: Chris Yang

Few spy series have a theme as iconic as the one used for Mission: Impossible. After all, it hasn’t been replaced in the franchise since its debut in 1967. Allegedly written in just 90 seconds by Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin—who was writing for television for the first time—its famous five-beat rhythm mimics the Morse code for "M.I.": dash dash dot dot.

Friends

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Few people remember who The Rembrandts are, but play "I’ll Be There for You" and the opening sequence of Friends instantly comes to mind. After failing to secure the rights to an R.E.M. song for the sitcom, Warner Bros. turned to The Rembrandts to record the theme we all know and love—a track that has since become a classic in sitcom history.

Get Smart!

Credit: Yohan Marion

Get Smart! may have been a parody of the spy genre so popular in the 1960s, but no one who has seen Maxwell Smart’s car turn the corner at the start of the credits will ever forget that theme song. Although uncredited, the tune was composed by Irving Szathmary, who aimed to create a playful twist on the sleek sounds of James Bond and Mission: Impossible.

Law & Order

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Can a short, repetitive tune convey mystery, tension, and even a hint of menace—and still be instantly recognizable worldwide? The Law & Order theme proves it can. Written by legendary TV composer Mike Post, the jazzy motif anchored all 20 seasons (1990–2010) of the original series and has carried over into its many spin-offs and revivals.

Bonanza

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If you preferred cowboys over spies in the 1960s, chances are you watched the map of the Ponderosa Ranch burst into flames during the opening credits of Bonanza. Written by the duo Jay Livingston and Ray Evans—who also gave us classics like Nat King Cole’s "Mona Lisa" and Doris Day’s "Que Será, Será"—the Bonanza theme gallops along with a guitar rhythm meant to evoke horses’ hooves, and it remains one of the most iconic Western themes of all time.

The Flintstones

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Unlike many of the other themes on this list, the tune for The Flintstones actually changed during the show’s run. For the first two seasons, the opening was the instrumental "Rise and Shine," which sounded very similar to the theme of another Hanna-Barbera production, The Bugs Bunny Show. Starting in season three, however, it was replaced with "Meet the Flintstones," a brassy, big-band style tune (allegedly inspired by a Beethoven sonata) that introduced "the modern Stone Age family." Today, it’s the version that remains etched in pop culture.

Seinfeld

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Seinfeld is classic for countless reasons—and its theme is one of them. Unlike most sitcoms, the opening credits featured Jerry performing stand-up, with jokes that changed from episode to episode. Composer Jonathan Wolff solved this by crafting a flexible theme built around slap-bass riffs and mouth pops that he could adjust each week to match Jerry’s timing and delivery. The result was a constantly evolving theme song that became as unconventional—and memorable—as the show itself.

The X-Files

Credit: Michael Herren

If we’re talking about theme songs that defined a genre, The X-Files can’t be left out. Its haunting soundscape delivers chills through its echoing tones—but did you know it came about by accident? Composer Mark Snow had written the basic melody, but it felt incomplete. Frustrated, he leaned on his keyboard, accidentally triggering a delay effect that created the iconic echo. Paired with his wife’s casual whistling, it evolved into the paranormal anthem of the 1990s.

Game of Thrones

Credit: Marek Studzinski

Let’s turn to one of the most iconic themes of the 21st century. When the show’s creators approached composer Ramin Djawadi, they showed him an early cut of the now-famous credits and gave him just one instruction: avoid flutes and solo vocals, staples of the fantasy genre that felt overused. Djawadi instead built the theme around the cello, giving it a dark, powerful resonance. The result was so unforgettable that it carried over to the prequel series House of the Dragon.

Gilligan’s Island

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One of the most beloved sitcoms of the 1960s, Gilligan’s Island also delivered one of the most memorable theme songs in TV history. "The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle" replaced the original tune composed by John Williams for the pilot episode. After the first season, the lyrics were revised—at the express request of Bob Denver, who played Gilligan—to include the secondary characters who hadn’t been mentioned in the original version.

Prophetic hits

10 times fiction turned into fact: predictions that became reality

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No one can know what the future holds, but there’s no harm in trying to guess! Throughout history, some people have had a knack for making predictions that, no matter how impossible they seemed at the time, turned out to be true. From robotic assistants to the tragedy of the Titanic, there’s no shortage of eerie predictions that became reality. Here, we’ve gathered 10 of the craziest for your enjoyment!

Credit: Justin Wolff

Twain famously predicted his own death. He stated that he would die with Halley’s Comet, which was visible in the sky in 1910. He said, "I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." Remarkably, Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, just one day after Halley’s Comet made its closest approach to Earth, making his death one of the most uncanny and accurate personal predictions in history.

Credit: Paula Lavalle

Nikola Tesla envisioned a wireless, global communication system that would allow people to transmit voice, images, and information anywhere in the world. In a 1926 interview, he speculated about the future of mobile technology, saying, "When wireless is fully applied, the Earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of solving the problems of humanity." This prediction is strikingly close to modern smartphones, though the "huge brain" part is a bit more questionable.

Credit: Chris Karidis

Nostradamus’s quatrains are often cited as predictions of major events, and one of his verses is believed to foresee the Great Fire of London in 1666. The quatrain reads: "The blood of the just will be demanded of London, burnt by fire in the year ‘66." In fact, the historically infamous Great Fire of London did break out in 1666, devastating much of the city. Though Nostradamus' cryptic style leaves much room for interpretation, this one is as accurate as predictions can get!

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Jules Verne’s 19th-century novel From the Earth to the Moon imagined a moon landing, complete with remarkable details such as launching from Florida and returning via splashdown in the ocean. His fictional spacecraft even bore a resemblance to the Apollo command module. To make this even more impressive, in Verne’s time, the idea of actually reaching the Moon was as alien and impossible as it gets! Space travel was purely the stuff of fantasy, and no one had yet conceived of the technology needed to make it a reality.

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In Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella Futility, a ship called the Titan strikes an iceberg and sinks—all of this obviously sounds eerily familiar, but surprisingly it was written 14 years before the actual Titanic disaster! The many similarities are striking: both ships were deemed "unsinkable" and carried insufficient lifeboats.

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In his 1914 novel The World Set Free, H.G. Wells described a future with "atomic bombs" many decades before their invention. His fictional weapons used radioactive decay to unleash destructive power, in an eerily similar fashion to nuclear weapons. Unsurprisingly, when the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, physicists referenced Wells’ work, acknowledging its role in sparking public imagination about the potential and dangers of atomic energy.

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Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel Looking Backward envisioned a utopian future in which citizens used a card to access funds from a central bank—a concept that closely resembles modern credit or debit cards, which didn’t emerge until the mid-20th century. While Bellamy’s vision was rooted in fiction, it’s clear he had a very good understanding of how emerging economic trends could shape the distant future.

Credit: Leon Seibert

Mark Twain certainly had a knack for predicting the future. Not content with foreseeing the date of his own death, he also described a global "telectroscope" network that connected people instantly across the world—a concept we now easily recognize as an early imagining of the internet.

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The silent 1927 film Metropolis featured a video phone, many years before such technology was even considered possible. This futuristic device envisioned real-time, face-to-face communication, remarkably similar to how video calls work today. The film captured early 20th-century optimism about technological progress, highlighting how fiction can inspire real-world innovation.

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In Asimov’s I, Robot (1950), he envisioned a world where robots worked alongside humans, governed by ethical guidelines such as the famous "Three Laws of Robotics." While we aren’t quite there yet, the issues and concepts Asimov introduced continue to resonate today. His work not only anticipated the potential of artificial intelligence but also sparked ongoing ethical debates about AI development and the complexities of integrating advanced technology into society.