TV Themes that made the charts

[Tratorello]

The Wizard aka Top of the Pops by Paul Hardcastle.

[Tratorello]

Also The Clothes Show used a Pet Shop Boys song, although not one of their bigger hits as far as I remember.

[Satchmo Distel]

Do you know if the Beeb ever played the whole thing?

It's less than three minutes, but I listened to it through for the first time not so long ago and had never heard the bridge

I recall them doing so as background music for a 3 minute film sequence. This may also have been done by ITV when doing cricket items (I remember Magpie doing so in 1980 when they visited The Oval for a feature). Sometimes the closing titles would be long enough to get near to the bridge.

I had the track on 'BBC Sporting Themes', 1979.

[Snake Plissken]

Rough Guide used Big Hotel from Big Pig's Bonk album as the theme, but it was never released as a single over here. The show also used Hungry Town as incidental music.

(Breakaway from the same album is used over the opening credits of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. For an obscure Aussie band that produced one album of 12 songs, it's a pretty good hit rate to have them used as themes.)

[Amor de Cosmos]

I don;t know abiout the UK charts, but the US charts had lots of TV theme hits.

"Hey Hey We're The Monkees" must have been a US hit.

"Maybe", a hit for Thom Pace in 1979, was the theme of that Grizzly Adams series.

Frankie Laine's "Rawhide".

Vonda Shepard' "Searchin' My Soul", the Ally McBeal theme.

Pratt & McClain's "Happy Days"

Steve Carlisle's "WKRP In Cincinnati"

John Sebastian's "Welcome Back (Kotter)"

Bob James's "Angela (Theme from Taxi)"

Dave Grusin' "Theme from St Elsewhere"

Loads more, I suspect.

See my post upthread

[Jah Womble]

The Doctor Who theme was released as a single in 1986.

Previously a minor hit for Mankind in 1978, making UK #25.

[Guy Profumo]

"Sailing " by Rod Stewart was the theme to a BBC documentary series following life on HMS Ark Royal.

Wasn't that "reversed in" though?

The song had been the hit before the series?

[elguapo4]

Wasn't that "reversed in" though?

The song had been the hit before the series?

You could be right, I remember the series but I was only 12 at the time. Wikipedia is a bit vague about it.

[Guy Profumo]

Shame on you you fucking Philistines - Don Spencer, Fireball XL5

[Stumpy Pepys]

Postman Pat (although it turns out it only reached #44)

[Jah Womble]

You could be right, I remember the series but I was only 12 at the time. Wikipedia is a bit vague about it.

It had been a huge UK number one for him the previous year (1975): the TV usage saw it reissued in 1976, climbing back up to #3.

So, yes, a 'reversal' - which I don't think really counts.

Ditto all these other shows using previous hits as theme music.

[pebblethefish]

It surprised me to find that Wheels on Fire wasn't specifically written for Absolutely Fabulous, but was already a hit. Also that it didn't get released off the back of the show, but instead the Pet Shop Boys recorded Absolutely Fabulous that featured the show but not the theme tune which got to number 4.

[Jah Womble]

It surprised me to find that Wheels on Fire wasn't specifically written for Absolutely Fabulous, but was already a hit...

Yep, a quarter of a century before the show borrowed it.

[Lang Spoon]

The Absolutely Fabulous version is way superior to the Basement Tapes Dylan effort.

[Guy Profumo]

It surprised me to find that Wheels on Fire wasn't specifically written for Absolutely Fabulous, but was already a hit. Also that it didn't get released off the back of the show, but instead the Pet Shop Boys recorded Absolutely Fabulous that featured the show but not the theme tune which got to number 4.

So also see "The Office"?

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Absolutely Fabulous version is way superior to the Basement Tapes Dylan effort.

But not to Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger's original version.

For those who haven't had the pleasure:

[Satchmo Distel]

The Water Margin - Pete Mac Junior / Godiego (Double-A, English and Japanese versions, with the Japanese one being possibly the only UK chart hit in Japanese)

[Amor de Cosmos]

I think Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto possibly did, unless Kenny Ball's version totally wiped it out.

[Jah Womble]

But not to Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger's original version.

That was the hit version to which I was referring, yes.

[G-Man]

So also see "The Office"?

The Office's theme version of "Handbags And Gladrags" is my favourite of all versions.

[Patrick Thistle]

The Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer was #1 for a week in the USA. Not sure if it had a UK release.

[Sean of the Shed]

The Miami Vice theme by Jan Hammer was #1 for a week in the USA. Not sure if it had a UK release.

Number 5 in the UK. The follow up Crockett's Theme did even better, reaching number 2.

[Satchmo Distel]

I think Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto possibly did, unless Kenny Ball's version totally wiped it out.

Sakamoto charted higher but, oddly, 6 months later. Compare:

https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/sukiyaki/

This was because the Japanese version was not released in the UK until it did well in the US: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/kyu-sakamoto/sukiyaki

• This song has a remarkable story - it's a Japanese hit that became wildly popular in America despite Japanese lyrics that hardly anyone in the US could understand. Kyu Sakamoto was a star in Japan as both an actor and a singer, and this song, known in his country as "Ue O Muite Aruko," was a #1 hit there in 1961.
  
  Sometime in 1962, a British music executive named Louis Benjamin heard the song when he was traveling in Japan, and he had his group Kenny Ball & his Jazzmen record an instrumental version that made it to #10 on the UK charts. Benjamin renamed the song "Sukiyaki" after a Japanese food he enjoyed - a one-pot dish made with sliced beef, tofu, noodles and vegetables.
  
  The song made it to America when a disk jockey in Washington state heard the British version, and started playing the original by Sakamoto. He used the title "Sukiyaki," which was much more palatable to Americans than "Ue O Muite Aruko," and requests started pouring in for the song. Capitol Records obtained the American rights to the song and released it stateside, where it went to #1 on the Hot 100 for three weeks and also held the top spot on the Adult Contemporary chart for five weeks.
  
  So how did this American disc jockey get a copy of the original song? Marsha Cunningham gave us the answer. She explained to us: "In 1961-2 I was a high school student at The American School In Japan, living in Zushi, Japan. My dad was a pilot for Japan Airlines. While enjoying a Japanese movie staring Kyu Sakamoto, I heard the most unbelievably beautiful song. I purchased the record at a local shop and brought it back to the states the next year when I attended a girl's boarding school in Sierra Madre, California. I played it in the dormitory frequently; everyone liked it. One girl took my record home with her on the weekend so her dad could play it on his radio station, and the rest is history!"

I assume that HMV issued the Sakamoto version in the UK after its US success (No. 1 on 15.6.63: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1963-06-15)

"Tokyo Melody" by Helmut Zacharias & His Orchestra (BBC Olympics theme) made the Top 10 on 25.11.64, a month after the Olympics finished, so these Japanese hits were slow climbers after their initial exposure.

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart...19641119/7501/

[Fussbudget]

Olympic (the theme tune from The Word) was a top 10 hit for 808 State in 1990 as a double A-side with Cubik

[3 Colours Red]

Speaking of "Olympic" and other sporting themes that technically qualify as hits:

The Olympic Track, Simon May's composition for commercial coverage of Seoul 1988 (both ITV and Channel 4 used it) squeaked into the top 100 at #96.

Aztec Gold, the theme to ITV's coverage of the 1986 World Cup and later used for Saint & Greavsie, got to #48. Trumped by the BBC's Aztec Lightning which got to #45.