You've seen the worst, now what about the best? After forcing you to deal with our
horrible theme song posts, we've decided to compile a collection looking at the
good side of cartoon music! During our research, we found an easy way to tell the good from the bad (as you'll see after the jump). What's the secret? Narration!
Yes, yes, we know, we know. We're blatantly skipping over things like
and
and
and we're very very sorry about that, because they are absolutely fantastic songs. But we've decided to focus this time. We're taking a look at narration. It may have fallen out of fashion in recent years, but we believe that narration is the often-overlooked key to creating the greatest cartoon themes. Take, for example, the World's Mightiest Mortal.
Dig that crazy echo! Billy Batson might not have the best animating team, but he's sure got your attention now, right? And even better, they introduced them this way every week, so you could run to get cereal and still not miss a thing. Why can't Gossip Girl have that? Oh, uh, we mean V. Of course, it is completely possible to go too far with the narration. When that happens, you get something a bit like Blackstar.
It's no wonder this only lasted thirteen episodes. Who wants to hear that stupid story every week? It's like the kid version of going to a Playboy Mansion party and then having to talk to a sixty-five year old accountant all night. Wrap it up, Blackie, we just wanna watch He-Man. Anyway, let's just call Blackstar the exception that proves the rule. Because, for the most part, superfluously vocalized words means you're gonna have a good time during the credits, even when you know the cartoon's gonna suck. Hey, did we say "suck"? It must be time for the Impossibles!
You see the images and you know in your heart that it's going to be awful, butā¦ that voice! That perfect balance of Orson Wells and Ken Nordine! How can you say no to that voice? Maybe this time, this time, Hanna-Barbera will deliver everything it promises. Maybe this time, the Impossibles won't break your heart. Maybe they'll be more likeā¦ the Galaxy Rangers.
Ahhh, that's the stuff. A dash of the highway to the danger zone, a hint of well placed keyboards, and lyrics that summarize the show's basic premise without giving anything away. Yeah, that's what Daddy likes. Oh, umā¦ sorry. Forgot you were still reading along. How embarrassing. Of course, there's also the magic of implied narration. The early 80s synth-pop classic Pole Position does a great job of rocking you as you learn, letting you infer the history of this brother/sister race car driving secret agent orphan team and their justice-loving government contact who supplies them with their talking cars all from simple context clues! Plus there's a cat. Well, it's cat-like. Maybe it's an opossum.
A second example of implied narration can be found in the theme song to the only cartoon full of classic 1920s newspaper heroes, the not-really-at-all-good Defenders of the Earth. We're including it here because we noticed something very special, now that we've watched it as grown-ups. As you learn about Flash Gordon and The Phantom and that other guy, Aquaman or whatever, take a second and savor how what you're hearing sounds an awful lot like a Tenacious D songā¦ about a decade before the band ever formed! We're sure that says something about the music world, we just don't know what.
So have we made our point? It seems pretty clear from where we're typing. Narration accompanies a better class of theme song. Maybe it's a subtle sign that someone is trying very hard to
, or maybe it's just a weird way to distract you from
. Who can say for sure? All we know is that, in our opinion, narration is obviously a good thing. And if you don't agree, just have a word with the robot awesome enough to convince Optimus Prime to work for scale.
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11-20-2009, 01:10 PM
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