Infectious 90s TV Theme Songs

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I'm not saying our generation watched too much TV, but it's pretty telling that I've yet to witness someone break into, "Innnnn West Philadelphia, born and raised..." without an entire room of 20-somethings clambering to joining in. If I even overhear someone humming what sounds to be the opening bars of Rockapella's iconic Where in the World of Carmen San Diego theme, I'm wont to fill in the mid-range harmony bits from distances of up to 100 feet. True story. It may or may not have happened at the gym.*

It's almost a physiological reaction; we just can't help ourselves. Somewhere along the way, we've collected an arsenal of television theme song lyrics that are laying dormant in the darkest nether regions of our brains. We have an excellent command of the instrumental themes as well, but they fail to command the same involuntary knee-jerk reaction. Singing along to your old favorite TV intros has a way of transporting you right back onto your childhood couch, covered in Pringle crumbs, sipping on a Kool-Aid Burst. It's the magic of memory. Or maybe just a testament to the innumerable hours we all logged in front of the tube during our formative years.

Whether or not you liked the shows was almost irrelevant. Some of them were worth watching on the merit of introductory song alone. For the most part, though, they lived up to the immense promise of their catchy theme tunes. For whatever reason, they were irrepressibly memorable:



Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?



Love it or hate it, you've got to admit Rockapella did their homework. PBS commissioned the Carmen San Diego children's game show in direct response to the abysmal perfomance of American students on geography standards. Rockapella managed to squeeze almost every location on earth into their three-minute theme song, not to mention the wealth of groan-inducing puns they sprinkled throughout.

Some of these puns I'm willing to accept as legitimate jokes. You know, "We never Arkansas her steal" and that kind of thing. But at a certain point, they're really pushing it; I don't care how alluring their multi-part harmonious arrangement is, it's never okay to say, "She stole the beans from Lima." I get it, I get it, but it's not even the correct pronounciation. Rockapella did make up for their grevious pun infractions, though, by breaking it down in a major way at the end of the song. Well done, Rockapella.



The Fresh Prince of Bel Air



Expository theme songs are great the first time you tune in to a show. If you have no clue of the premise or back story, it'll fill you in pretty much right up until the events of the current episode with aits incredibly informative and detailed lyrics. In some cases, it all gets pretty tiresome after the first few viewings. In a time before DVR, there was no fast-forwarding through the credits.

Luckily, this was not the case with The Fresh Prince's theme song. We just couldn't get enough. Sometimes I'd watch the show just to see the opening credits. This one was a keeper, destined to go down forever in 90s TV theme history. So many of us worked tirelessly on memorizing this one. The furthest I ever got was to, "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air", so I'm achingly jealous of all of you who know all of the verses by heart.



Saved By the Bell



The sheer exposure to this one was more than enough to commit it to memory. Saved By The Bell played in seemingly continuous loop in syndication throughout our youth. For awhile it seemed that we couldn't turn on the TV without flipping by an episode of SbtB. The theme song lyrics rivaled the show's subject matter in cheesiness, but both had a certain alluring quality.

This song takes a lot of liberties in fitting in syllables, working in well-pruned lines like "And the 'larm gives out a warning". Yes, you heard right. The 'larm. Alarm just wouldn't fit. It didn't really matter to us, though. So long as they kept parading attractive teen stars across our screen, we'd listen to whatever they wanted.



Salute Your Shorts



Salute Your Shorts' theme played out like a camp anthem parceled out amongst the main characters. As in any good teen sitcom, we all just assume that there are indeed other campers somewhere on the premises, though none quite as interesting and plotline-worthy as our major players. Sure, there might have been some other kids stationed at Camp Anawanna over the summer, but none quite as enthralling as Budnik or Donkey Lips.

Toilet humor is like comedic gold to children, so it's no wonder we delighted in the line, "Camp Anawanna, we hold you in our hearts/and when we think about you/it makes me wanna fart!" We all knew Ug was just a huge spoilsport for reprimanding the gang. I guess we've got to cut him a break, though. He was the almost only adult we ever saw, save for the mysterious disembodied voice of camp director Dr. Kahn. You'd probably be pretty tightly wound, too, if you were the only grown-up in a sea of teenagers for an entire summer.


Full House



Even a few bars of the jazzy "ba-ba-ba-de-ba-bop-bop" at the end is enough to jar us all back into full Full House mode, yearning once again to be raised by a zany, madcap team of ill-equipped and uncompatible male role models. The opening sequence became incredibly well known throughout the show's multi-season run. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who can't complete the line, "What ever happened to predictability? The milkman, the paper boy..." See, you're just itching to fill in the blank, aren't you?



Hey Dude



Who would have thought that a western song about working summers on a dude ranch could be so compelling? Hey Dude represented the classic era of Nickelodeon, and its signature theme song did not disappoint. Well, at least not in melody; lyrically it could have used some rethinking. It doesn't really make sense, per se (It's a little wild and a little strange? Really?) but it all adds up to a part of the show's charm. Yippee ki yi ay, lil dogie.


We may not have known it at the time, but even after all these years these themes are as recognizable and catchy as they ever were. The downside, of course, is that they'll be tumbling around in your head on spin cycle for the rest of the day, but it's a fair trade off to get to relive all of those gloriously cheesy 90s TV anthems. Or at least that's how you can justify it when the guy at the next cubicle tells you for the twelfth time to please keep it down.

*Okay, okay, it did happen at the gym. Someone's iPod was blaring it from the bank of treadmills. I couldn't resist.

Raves

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Even before they were harping about online predators, Dateline NBC had me terrified to leave the comfort of my own home. With their multi-part series on the dangers of 90s raves, I was almost certain that someone was going to randomly usher me into an abandoned warehouse against my will, stick an ecstasy-laced candy pacifier in my mouth, and subject me to endless hours of pulsating techno music and seizure-inducing light shows. You know you're growing up in pretty cushy conditions when your most major fears revolve around involuntary attendance at a wild underground party.




Other generations have all the luck. Their subcultural miscreants were usually tied to some sort of ideological principles. You know, peace, free love, that sort of thing. It's almost as if the preceding counter-cultural movements took all the good visionary underpinnings and we were stuck sorting through the remnants bin. Our take on rebellious youth culture amounted to Seattle Grunge culture and Euro-techno ravers. We may not have been as idealistic as the hippies who came before us, but it could have been worse. After all, we could have been pseudo-intellectual fake glasses-sporting ironic t-shirt clad hipsters.

There were some vague alliances between rave culture and principles, but the connection was fuzzy at best. At its heart, rave culture represented the happy-go-lucky invincibility that characterized the 90s. You know you're getting older when you start drawing broad metaphors between youth culture and the state of the economy, but it's an aging leap I'm willing to make. Raving was youth culture in its purest, least dilute form: wild, irresponsible, and generally under contempt of adults everywhere.

Many of us may have been too young at the time to be a driving force in the rave scene, but that wasn't about to stop us from defiantly sucking our pacifiers in homeroom. Rave trends quickly disseminated from underground phenomenon into mainstream fashion statements. While the raw ingredients undoubtedly varied from rave to rave, here's a rough recipe for a legitimate 90s raver.


Abandoned Warehouse


What's a party without a proper venue? By proper venue, of course, I mean a sketchy abandoned space that may or may not have once been some sort of industrial storage facility. As many of the early raves were a sort of impromptu underground effort, any old enclosed area would have to do. Raves were by no means limited to these settings, but there was a certain charm to illegal party squatting. Or at least that's what I gathered from my avid viewing of numerous multi-part Dateline NBC undercover exposes. They made it seem like every abandoned warehouse in the country was packed fire-code defiantly full of sweaty, effervescent teenagers.



Light Show


If you're going to party straight through to the wee hours of the morning, you've got to have some sort of visual stimulation. Laser light shows were a signature rave feature, with brightly colored strobe-like flashing creating a uniquely headache-inducing effect. I had to settle for my cheaply imitative Nickelodeon brand laser light how generator. I had the power to turn my basement into a wild party light-flashing party scene, but unfortunately I was only 10 at the time. The closest I was coming to raving was chugging a bottle of Surge and nursing a ring pop.



Pacifier

This was one of those inexplicable trends that caught on in a big way despite a total lack of purpose and functionality. Our parents spent months coaxing us off these damned things only to have us pick up the habit again 15 years down the road. I'm still not completely clear on if the pacifier had any sort of representational meaning or if someone just thought it might be fun to start selling them as necklaces to teenagers. Either way, these things were everywhere.



Candy Rings/Necklaces


The more I look at it, the more it seems like ravers all had some sort of serious oral fixation. The ecstasy could only make everything all the more delicious, so it was probably a good idea to keep some highly portable snacks on your person at all times.



Glowsticks


They're sort of like your own personal laser light show. If you get bored with whatever lights the party coordinators are flashing, you can always wave your glowstick super quickly in front of your face. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the drugs probably enhanced this experience somewhat as well.



Ecstasy and/or Cocaine


Speaking of mood-altering substances, 90s partiers weren't really the depressant type. Leave the mellowed-out drugs to the peace and free love hippies. Ravers needed uppers to maintain a decent level of prolonged hyperactivity. If you've got to flail wildly in a warehouse with only the aid of glowsticks and laser light shows to keep you awake, you probably needed a little something to keep the edge on.



UV Facepaint


Again with the glowing. It's a pretty safe bet to say if it glowed, ravers wanted to slather their bodies in it. I suppose it's a bit hard to see in a darkened warehouse, so any light source is much appreciated.


It's odd to think of raves as retro, but countercultural phenomenons tend to age quickly. While in the 90s raving seemed edgy and dangerous and unspeakably modern, in retrospect it loses a bit of its luster. Not literally, of course. I imagine that UV facepaint bonds to pores for life.It was a pretty wild ride while it lasted, but for now we'll just have to relive the experience (or vicarious experience) through the magic of memory. So grab your glowsticks, pop in a pacifier, and beware the judgmental Dateline undercover reporters; it's rave reminiscing time.

The Secret World of Alex Mack

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One of the fascinating things about looking back at shows you watched as a kid is that the characters never age. Upon revisiting the show you find that while you have progressed into an adult somewhere along the way, the show's characters remain frozen in time. When the show debuted you may have been the same age as the principal players, yet they've been held back in an eternal repetition of their childhood years.

Such is the case with Alex Mack, a middle school-aged semi-superhero of 90s Nickelodeon fame. I always thought of the two of us as contemporaries, so imagine my surprise to find that she's still just thirteen years old. The real-life actress who portrayed her, Larisa Oleynik, has grown alongside me into a more reasonable age of 28, but I related so well to the character that I came to think of her as something of a real person. I half-expected a current Google search for Alex Mack to pull up a YouTube clip of a late-20s version of the character, again clad in a flannel shirt and backwards cap, playing hooky from her office day job by morphing Capri Sun-style into a metallic puddle and slipping out through the heating vent. It was a bit jarring to realize that someone I'd yearned to befriend as as a kid is stuck at thirteen forever. Watching the show, I still kind of want to be friends, but it gives me a sort of uneasy feeling to imagine myself randomly befriending seventh graders. Sure, she might be scientifically significant, but I doubt Mr. and Mrs. Mack would take kindly to the two of us going out for a soda. At least not until after she'd finished her algebra homework, I mean.


The Secret World of Alex Mack premiered in 1994 as part of the Saturday night tween-geared SNICK programming block on Nickelodeon. Featuring a quirky young teenage girl, the show was a natural fit as a replacement for the very popular Clarissa Explains it All. Superpower premise aside, the general genre was a solid match to its predecessor. The show was originally conceived of with a male central character, but the departure of Clarissa led to some retooling. I don't think the boys were too disappointed, though. They all got Larisa Oleynik to drool over, so it wasn't a bad deal in the end.

While Alex's coming of age story is certainly confounded by her unusual chemical circumstances, she's generally just a young girl struggling to find her place in the ever-viney jungle of adolescence. We see her face mean girls, first crushes, and fights with her parents. Okay, so maybe she can move things with her mind and turn into a shiny puddle of echo-voiced goo, but at the end of the day she's just trying to see where she fits into the puzzle of junior high.

The show's subject matter was pretty sophisticated for a children's show. While many programs aimed at a young viewer demographic tend to patronize and dumb down factual information, The Secret World of Alex Mack gave it to us straight. Well, sort of. If you want to get technical, the entire premise and all related scientific data was completely fabricated and improbably at best. Shows with made-up scientific background are probably better-suited to children as we're less likely to question any chemical plot holes. Regardless, The Secret World of Alex Mack treated its viewers more or less like adults. We had a high tech chemical plant, the background on research and development, and some entree into the world of as-of-yet FDA unapproved weight loss aids that have the potential to turn you into a mutant.



Doesn't this opening sequence just stir up all sorts of displaced memories? I haven't watched the show in maybe 10 years, but I'm pretty sure I could recite Alex Mack's voiceover word-for-word regardless. Alex Mack is memorable in a way that few children's shows achieve, though maybe it's proportionate to how badly you wanted to possess her melting and mind-moving superpowers.

In the show's first episode, Alex is doused with the mysterious chemical (henceforth known as the crazy compound GC-161) on the way to her first day of junior high. Alex quickly discovers that the accident has left her with a number of unexplainable side effects, most importantly silver puddle meltability, telekinesis, and the ability to send little shocks out of her fingertips. On the negative, she also turns an unnatural shade of orange in lieu of a more ordinary pink when she blushes. All in all, sort of a tradeoff, but the pros pretty far outweigh the cons in terms of general superheroic symptoms.

If for some reason the show isn't so fresh in your mind, here's the entire first episode for nostalgic restoration purposes:







Alex lets her best friend Ray and her Janine Kishi-esque brainy sister Annie in on her secret, though she opts against telling her parents. Her father is employed by the anonymously ominous local chemical plant and reports directly to the notoriously evil Danielle Altron. Danielle and her plant partner in crime Vince are Alex's main adversarial forces, with the majority of superpower-related plotlines emphasizing Alex's continuous struggle to avoid capture and eventual subjection to creepy testing. Danielle and Vince see Alex as sort of a human lab rat and are endlessly caught up in hot pursuit of their subject. In a clever plot point, the chemical plant is Alex's hometown of Paradise Valley's main employer. That means most people report to Danielle, and few would want to face unemployment by crossing her. Unfortunately, that settles the score at Plant 1, Alex 0. Tough break.

The Secret World of Alex Mack lasted a solid four seasons, culminating in Alex's secret exposed. As the following finale teaser boomingly intones, "She can morph, but she can't hide..."



Alex Mack differentiated itself from other superhero shows in many ways, the most important of which may have been the fact that Alex would have preferred to be a normal kid over a wanted superhero. Even with all she had to gain from the incident, she was just an average kid at heart. Alex never asked to be extraordinary, nor did she possess some natural capacity for leadership or do-goodery. We could relate to her because she represented the rest of us far better than her comic book superhero contemporaries. She wasn't out saving the world; she just wanted to make it through seventh period English. With its cliffhanger ending, though, we're left to decide for ourselves whether Alex took the antidote. Feel free to speculate for yourself with the last clip of the series finale below. I'm still losing sleep over this one.