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How do you write TV theme music for children? Does it make you mega-rich? And does the tune itself eventually drive you (and parents everywhere) nuts?
We tracked down the creators of half-a-dozen of TV’s greatest children’s show themes in order to find out. As Bluey’s Joff Bush told us: “The key lesson is that if you’re going to write a theme tune, make sure you really like it because you’re going to hear it a helluva lot!”
From nostalgic cult classics to current hits, from cartoon animals to live-action school soaps, six composers confess the secrets of kids’ TV music …
‘Parents get woken up at 6am by it’
Composer Julian Nott scores Peppa Pig, as well as Wallace & Gromit, Bing and Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom.
It all started at the National Film and Television School’s animation department. Two fellow students became friends: Nick Park, who did Wallace & Gromit, and Mark Baker, who did Peppa Pig. They’ve been collaborators ever since.
Peppa was just another job that came along. I worked on the pilot episode for free as a favour. It wasn’t just the same theme tune as today, it was the same recording. We finally updated it last year but for two decades they used the demo version. It’s only 10 seconds long which is shorter than most title sequences. It was a challenge to write a short, sharp, catchy tune. It had to be fast and fun with a memorable melody. The gaps in it were exploited by Mark, who inserted oinking sound effects.
We classical musicians tend to laugh at pop writers for only knowing three chords but Peppa has two, which is probably a musical outrage. There was zero budget, so it’s all played on synthesisers and samplers. The instrumentation which became associated with Peppa – marimbas, timpani, glockenspiel, vibraphone – were only chosen because they were the most convincing samples you could get back then.
Peppa took over the world, so I hear my music all the time. I’m often in a cafe or airport and a child will be playing it on their iPad. I’m tempted to lean over and say: ‘I wrote that!’ but never have. There was a time when I couldn’t get on a train without hearing it. It’s a strange feeling. Kids watch their favourite shows on repeat, so it can drive parents mad. Toddlers work out how to switch on Peppa Pig and their parents get woken up at 6am by the theme music. It might be one of the most unpopular tunes ever written! But I’m very lucky that it’s given me financial security. Peppa Pig was like winning the lottery. It’s enabled me to sustain a career. It’s all upside and it’s marvellous.
‘It was the luckiest two minutes of my life’
Scott Gale wrote the theme song for NBC’s 1990s teen sitcom Saved By the Bell.
I was music coordinator on The Golden Girls. One Friday, the producer of this new teen comedy called and asked me to try out for the theme tune. My wife had left me that morning but I put down the phone, picked up my guitar and, bingo, it just poured out of me. It was the luckiest two minutes of my life. We recorded it over the weekend at my partner Rich Eames’s home studio.
On Monday morning, we handed in our cassette. Little did I know that executive producer Peter Engel had told all the other prospective composers not to include “saved by the bell” in the lyrics because he wasn’t sure the name would stick. But I never got that message, so the title appeared five times in mine. Peter later admitted he was glad I didn’t get his instructions.
Saved By the Bell was the first live-action Saturday morning kids’ show. Everything else was cartoons. I thought it’d be lucky to last seven episodes but it ran for four seasons. And the show, thank goodness, was heavy on music. We wrote it all. If there was a jukebox playing, we’d write the songs. The characters formed a rock group. We wrote what they played. There was something new every week.
Saved By the Bell was very good to me. I still get royalties from Spain, South Africa, everywhere. Those gigs are hard to get but it’s the gift that keeps on giving. I never tire of hearing it. I’ll chance across it while channel surfing and it whisks me back to those wild times. Nearly four decades later, I still get to talk about it. It’s nothing but wonderful.
‘I ended up writing songs with Ant and Dec’
Martin Brammer is the frontman of pop trio the Kane Gang, whose track became the basis of the theme tune to Byker Grove.
We’d already reworked our song Small Town Creed to be the jingle for Radio 1 DJ Gary Davies’s show. The makers of this local teen drama – a sort of Geordie version of Grange Hill – asked if the Kane Gang fancied doing the theme tune. Either out of expedience or laziness, we thought: “Hang on! Maybe we can get a third version out of it.”
It’s a challenge to create something impactful in 45 seconds. It became this tongue-in-cheek funk workout, a bit edgier than the average kids’ TV tune. A dozen of the cast came down to do the “Ooh, Byker Grove!” chants. That little laugh at the end was from Lyndyann Barrass, who played Spuggie. We liked it and left it in. People tend to remember that laugh. A few years ago, I got a request from another artist – Professor Green or someone – to sample it.
The show ran for 18 series, so royalties make a handy annual bonus. It’s not a life-changing amount of money but it’s hard making a living in music nowadays, so sidelines that tick over are invaluable. Midway through the run, we redid it slightly. Put a funky drummer sample on it to make it more contemporary. Byker Grove led to all sorts of connections. I did some work with Donna Air’s pop duo Crush and songwriting sessions with Ant and Dec as they were moving away from being PJ & Duncan. Lovely lads.
I’ve written hundreds of proper songs but the Byker Grove tune always gets a reaction. I write with Olly Murs now and he flipped when he found out. Now there’s a reboot in development. It would be madness to change the theme tune, right? Fingers crossed we get the call from Ant and Dec.
‘Kids are disappointed that I’m not a six-year-old girl’
Joff Bush wrote the theme music and composes most of the soundtrack for globally loved animation Bluey.
I met Daley Pearson [Bluey’s executive producer] when we were students. In 2017, he said: “Would you be interested in coming up to Brisbane for this side project we’ve got? It’s called Bluey, for four to six-year-olds.” I was like: “I doubt I’m the right fit but I’ll check it out.” I’ll be forever grateful that I did. I met [Bluey’s creator] Joe Brumm and we clicked. I watched the rough pilot episodes and just fell in love. I had do it.
I knew exactly what the show’s sound should be. A bit hand-made with an almost chamber ensemble sound. It’s hard to describe but I could hear the chord progression in my head. When the writing’s that good, it’s relatively easy to score. Joe Brumm makes my music look better. I suggested building a library of music which we could reuse but Joe wanted something new for every episode. I was like: “That’s a lot of work!” But it became one of the beauties of Bluey.
They were going to license a track for the theme tune but I said: “Can I have a go at it?” And then I had 10 goes at it! Version eight unlocked it. Now it’s hard to imagine without the theme song. It probably sounds simpler than it is. There are little details in it that only I notice. Parents tend to be more impressed than children. If I tell a kid that I write the music for the show, they’ll ask: “Are you Bluey?” “No.” “Oh, OK.” They’re disappointed that I’m a 41-year-old man, not a six-year-old girl. That keeps your ego in check.
I’m fortunate that my work’s more famous than me. Bluey’s been great for opening up career opportunities and pretty lucrative. The albums have topped the charts. It’s enabled me to work on strange projects that I want to do, rather than taking adverts to pay the rent. I’m just starting on a ballet.
I recently became a father and suddenly understood why dads find Bluey so emotional. I messaged Joe saying: “I get it now!” My daughter’s two and last week, she came back from daycare going: “Doo doo doo doo, Bluey and Bingo!” I was like: “Do you like that song?” She said: “It’s pretty good.” We rerecorded it last year and I got some cute photos of her conducting the orchestra. I’ll surprise her with them someday. Then again, I was singing Wagon Ride to her to help her go to sleep. She woke up, put her hand over my mouth and went: “Different music.” She’s my harshest critic.
‘My fee definitely wasn’t Scrooge McDuck money’
Pop and musical theatre songwriter Mark Mueller composed the theme tune for late 80s Disney series DuckTales.
I’d just had my first top 10 single, having written Nothin’ at All by Heart. That’s how I got the meeting at Disney for DuckTales. The execs told me: “Write a radio song, not a cartoon song,” with lots of action in the lyrics they could animate to. That’s why I came up with “race cars, lasers, aeroplanes ... it’s a duck blur”. I jammed as many moving images as possible into 60 seconds.
After the meeting, I drove back to my tiny apartment and wrote the song in 45 minutes on a second-hand Roland synthesiser. I was in a groove and it spilled out of me. I took the demo back to Disney and played it to them in person. They sent it all the way up to the head of the studio, who loved it. My head was spinning. Seldom does anything happen that quickly in Hollywood.
There are so many hooks in DuckTales. Everything from the intro bass lick to the “d-d-dangers” were meant to worm into your brain. The “woo-hoos” fitted perfectly into three empty beats. Vanity Fair called it “history’s catchiest single minute of music”. To me, catchy isn’t a dirty word. It’s what I strive for. My initial fee was $1,250, which definitely wasn’t Scrooge McDuck money. It barely paid for a month’s rent but thankfully, the royalties were good and they keep coming in.
After the show aired, I received a letter from the mother of an autistic child. She told me that she and her husband had never been able to communicate with their young son until he heard the DuckTales song. They would sing it to each other and it was the first time they truly connected. That touched me.
Its global reach is heady stuff. I went to South Korea and my rather somber tour guide had it as his ringtone. A few months ago in Portugal, a strait-laced female banker launched into it. I heard it from tinny speakers on a rickshaw in London. The impact that this minute-long song had on my life is immeasurable. The experience has been a perfect whirlwind – or should I say “duck blur”?
‘I got a £14,000 cheque for ringtones from Japan’
Writer, comedian and musician Mike Harding composed the scores for Danger Mouse and its spin-off Count Duckula.
“Manchester studio Cosgrove Hall Films were fans of my standup, so they asked if I had any ideas for animations. We made a pilot about a busking frog called Far-Out Fred and I did the music for The Reluctant Dragon. Then they said they’d got this mouse super-agent but it wasn’t quite working. I took a look and said: “You’re trying to make him a James Bond character, too rooted in the real world. You realise this is a mouse living in a pillar box? He can do whatever we like.”
I went away and wrote some scripts. I based arch enemy Baron Greenback on this real-life nemesis of mine called Alan Greenbank and made him an evil toad. When it came to the theme music, I studied 60s spy films and wrote a pastiche. Sort of Bond meets Dick Tracy. We dragged in local session musicians and put it together.
Danger Mouse became a classic of its time. David Jason and Terry Scott were terrific at the voices. The animators were amazing. It was a joy to be part of. People felt real warmth towards it. I once stood in for Seamus Heaney at short notice, giving the opening speech at an Irish school arts festival. When I said I wrote the music for Danger Mouse, the kids went wild. I got what my grandad used to call a “standing ovulation”.
We still get royalty cheques. The biggest was one year when we got £14,000 from Japan for ringtones. There was a CBBC remake a decade ago which went worldwide but the royalties from Kuala Lumpur are tuppence. I only get a standing ovulation from old people nowadays. But I still have a T-shirt saying “The bloke who wrote the music for Danger Mouse”!
