Music of the Day, 21 July 2025

ahhhhh, nostalgia

I woke with a television show theme running through my mind—which isn’t unusual in and of itself. After all, much of my youth was dominated by the radio and TV, and the commercial jingles¹ and theme songs of TV shows were designed to become earworms. Many of them are still lodged in my head, obviously.

What’s unusual about today’s MotD is that it’s an instrumental piece. That allowed for the show to have an ever-changing voiceover as a lead-in to the episode, and once I understood the nature of the show, it was as much of a must-watch as the program itself.

At first, I didn’t get that Soap was a parody of daytime soap operas because my mom didn’t watch them. It was still a hoot and a half to young Jackie, largely because of its silliness and snark. Reading its Wiki page revealed lots of interesting tidbits I was unaware of back then, as well as several interesting guest appearances.

Soap was my introduction to Billy Crystal, who arguably had the most challenging role on the series: playing a gay/possibly transsexual person at a time when discussing such matters candidly was rare and risky.² My recollection is some of his lines and character development would be considered strongly cringe now; but for the 1970s, the writers did a decent job, and Crystal’s performance was solid. Robert Guillaume³ as the ultrasnarky Benson was another standout.

George Tipton composed the theme song, as well as other theme songs and incidental music for many other shows, plus movie scores. He also collaborated with several great musicians, including Harry Nilsson.

This country’s current soap-operaesque administration is undoubtedly what resurrected the Soap theme for me, and I’m actually glad for it. I remembered the light, bouncy synth melody note for note; listening to it with earbuds reveals a tasty, slightly funky bassline and great drum work, especially on cymbals.

Apologies if my earworm and/or remarks and links have spawned some relatives for you; but if that’s happened, please share in the comments. Being a former memory researcher, I’m fascinated by the oddities that persist there from childhood.

1. an assignment in my eighth-grade English class was to list as many jingles as one could. I don’t remember what we were supposed to learn from this, but I do remember my teacher being amazed at how many I’d come up with

2. Matt Baume made an excellent video discussing how problematic Soap was for ABC execs and the censors

3. who isn’t in the group image used for the vid; his character was spun off into its own show, Benson, at which time he left Soap