The 1970s wasn’t just about bell-bottoms and watergate—it was the decade when television finally found its voice. Television themes transcended their functional role as mere introductions and became cultural manifestations of power, identity, and social change. These weren’t just catchy jingles but sonic rebellions that rewired the American consciousness, creating shared cultural touchpoints across race, class, and gender lines.
Before streaming services fractured our viewing habits, these themes united millions in a collective experience every week, their melodies functioning almost as unofficial national anthems for a country in transition.
10. The Mary Tyler Moore Show – ‘Love Is All Around’
Before Beyoncé told girls to run the world, Sonny Curtis crafted the soundtrack for the first television revolution that dared to show a single woman prioritizing career over marriage. This wasn’t just a catchy tune—it was a sonic manifesto that smuggled second-wave feminism into Middle America’s living rooms.
When they re-recorded the theme with updated lyrics for later seasons, the changes mirrored how women’s expectations were evolving in real time. The show ran while the Equal Rights Amendment fought for ratification, making this upbeat ditty something far more powerful—a weekly reminder that women deserved more than the kitchen and nursery.
Mary Richards tossing her hat became the cultural equivalent of a raised fist, but with enough Midwestern charm that it didn’t scare off the advertisers. That 30-second opener did more for normalizing female independence than a stack of manifestos ever could. For an even deeper look at how music shaped the era, see this essential roundup of 70 songs that defined music in the ’70s.
9. M*A*S*H – ‘Suicide Is Painless’
Nothing says “this isn’t your father’s sitcom” quite like an instrumental theme that sounds like what depression might compose if it knew how to play piano. Mandel’s haunting melody operates as a sonic Trojan horse—viewers expecting laughs instead got existential whiplash as the theme’s melancholy notes established this wasn’t just another wacky workplace comedy.
The instrumental version that aired weekly was sanitized for network sensibilities; the original lyrics (penned by a 14-year-old, of all people) were deemed too raw for prime time. It’s the perfect musical representation of the series itself: something deeply subversive smuggled past censors under the guise of entertainment.
8. The Jeffersons – ‘Movin’ On Up’
Why it matters: Composer and performer Ja’net DuBois (who also played Willona on Good Times) infused this gospel-inspired anthem with authentic joy and aspiration, making it the perfect musical embodiment of the American Dream. The theme celebrated upward mobility with its catchy melody and uplifting lyrics, perfectly capturing George and Louise Jefferson’s journey from a working-class neighborhood to a deluxe apartment in Manhattan.
This theme song transcended television to become a cultural shorthand for success and progress, frequently referenced in everything from graduation ceremonies to advertising campaigns. After 11 successful seasons, both the show and its theme remained powerful symbols of achievement against societal barriers.
7. All in the Family – ‘Those Were the Days’
No other theme so brilliantly tricks its audience into complicity with the very mindset it’s about to dismantle. O’Connor and Stapleton’s deliberately off-key performance serves as television’s most subversive karaoke session—forcing viewers to confront the comfortable myths of American nostalgia before systematically destroying them over the next 30 minutes.
The genius lies in how the song’s rose-colored glasses vision of the past (“Girls were girls and men were men”) mirrors exactly the selective memory that prevents social progress. It’s essentially a musical version of that Facebook friend who keeps posting about how everything was better “back then” while conveniently forgetting about segregation and limited women’s rights.
Television executives who worried about alienating viewers with controversial content discovered the perfect trojan horse: wrap your social criticism in a singalong tune that sounds about as threatening as a nursery rhyme. That unpolished duet accomplished what countless academic papers couldn’t—it got Middle America to critically examine its own mythology while tapping their feet to the very beliefs being dismantled.
6. Happy Days – ‘Happy Days’
Nothing showcases America’s addiction to nostalgia quite like a 1970s show creating a sanitized version of the 1950s with a theme song that hit the Billboard charts twenty years after the era it was mythologizing. The Pratt & McClain rendition that became the show’s signature didn’t even arrive until season three—a musical midlife crisis that found the show abandoning its original theme (“Rock Around The Clock”) for something more manufactured but infinitely more marketable.
The resulting earworm hit #5 on the charts, proving that television themes could function as legitimate pop hits rather than mere introductions. It’s basically the sonic equivalent of those Instagram filters that make everything look warmer and more perfect than reality ever was.
What makes this theme fascinating isn’t just its catchiness but its cultural sleight-of-hand. Written during the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, it deliberately channels an idealized version of pre-Kennedy America—a fantasy version of the 1950s where teenage problems never extended beyond getting a date for the dance.
5. Welcome Back, Kotter – ‘Welcome Back’
1976. John Sebastian, fresh from his Woodstock-era Lovin’ Spoonful fame, somehow convinced America that a gentle folk-rock ballad about returning to teach in an underfunded Brooklyn high school deserved to top the charts alongside disco and arena rock.
The result was television’s most successful musical crossover—a theme that managed to be simultaneously commercially viable and emotionally authentic. Sebastian didn’t just write a catchy opener; he crafted what amounts to a stealth protest song that highlighted urban education while making it sound as inviting as a warm blanket on a cold day.
What’s remarkable about this theme isn’t just its chart dominance but its cultural longevity. The show lasted a modest four seasons, yet the song remains etched in collective memory nearly half a century later—the rare case where the musical introduction vastly outlived its source material.
4. Charlie’s Angels – Theme Song
Before the term “girl boss” existed, this instrumental theme was already doing sonic heavy lifting—creating the first mainstream soundtrack for female empowerment that didn’t come packaged in flower power or folk music trappings. Elliott and Ferguson’s composition pulls off a remarkable balancing act, using funky guitar riffs that evoke both femininity and danger simultaneously.
The opening notes accomplish what nowadays would require a 12-part podcast series—establishing that women could dominate traditionally masculine spaces without sacrificing their identity. The theme creates musical language for something television hadn’t really attempted before: action heroines who weren’t merely gender-swapped male characters.
3. Hawaii Five-O – Theme Song
Some instrumentals become so culturally embedded they practically function as alternative national anthems—and Morton Stevens’ pulse-quickening composition sits at the head of that table. The genius of this theme isn’t just its irresistible surf-rock energy but how perfectly it fuses setting and story into a compact sonic package.
Those crashing cymbals sonically echo the Hawaiian waves shown in the opening footage, while the driving brass section propels viewers into a state of adrenalized anticipation more effectively than any energy drink on the market. The Ventures’ cover version rocketing to #4 on Billboard wasn’t just a commercial achievement—it was proof that television music could stand independently as legitimate art.
2. The Rockford Files – Theme Song
Before streaming algorithms recommended your next binge, Mike Post and Pete Carpenter were creating the musical equivalent of a personality profile—translating James Garner’s reluctant detective into a perfectly calibrated arrangement of harmonica, electric piano, and laid-back percussion.
What separates this theme from lesser instrumental openings is its emotional specificity; rather than generic “action music,” it creates a complete psychological profile through carefully selected instruments and progressions. Television composers still study this arrangement when trying to establish character through music, understanding that Post and Carpenter cracked the code for translating personality into instrumentation—a technique now standard in everything from “Breaking Bad” to “Succession.”
1. Barney Miller – Theme Song
While other cop shows leaned into dramatic brass and tension-filled strings, Elliott and Ferguson delivered what amounts to a masterclass in musical counternarrative. That iconic bass line doesn’t just introduce a sitcom—it subverts an entire genre’s worth of sonic expectations. The funky, jazz-influenced composition essentially tells viewers: “This isn’t your typical police story.”
The arrangement works almost like a musical comedy, using instruments in surprising ways that mirror how the show itself found humor in unexpected places. Those seemingly random percussion flourishes function exactly as the precinct’s oddball characters do—disrupting expectations while somehow creating a cohesive whole that’s greater than its parts.
That walking bass line does more characterization work than pages of dialogue could, establishing the precinct as the true protagonist rather than any individual officer. It’s the televisual equivalent of how a great DJ can transform a room’s energy with just the right beat drop—except in this case, the transformation is from standard police drama to boundary-pushing comedy. Of course, not every ’70s show is remembered as fondly—here’s a rundown of the 10 most hated 1970s TV shows that had audiences reaching for the remote.
