Like Sands Through an Hourglass … so is the deluge of soap theme changes
I'm going to take this column as an opportunity to memorialize the now defunct The World of Soap Themes. It was a beautiful, comprehensive, and honorary site to nearly every theme from every soap over the world. May the one of a kind site rest in peace.
Okay, well, anyone who had the chance to ever see the site before it went down has seen a plethora of soap opening and closing themes. One of the things that was the same for nearly every soap, and is still true for many of the serials across the pond, the music was simple, lustful, beautiful, and serene. The visual on the screen, a drawing of the town, a simple backdrop, or something related to the series, with someone announcing the title of the series. There was nothing wrong with it and nothing about it had to change.
But like all good things on soaps, somewhere during the early nineties, networks began picking at their institutions in a needless attempt to bring soaps into the nineties. Nearly every single soap changed their soap theme, once, if not twice in the last decade. Were the theme songs changed in small, delicate ways? Of course not. All My Children's new theme song, was a sexy saxophone solo that didn't last for long. One Life to Live went from serene to sounding like it was the kind of music that plays when a subway is roaring through a tunnel. General Hospital went commercial with a saxophone solo from Dave Cox that was accompanied by a music video featuring the recently returned Emma Samms. As the World Turns went through two changes. Their well love synthesized theme song from the eighties changed to a nice quiet melody and then made a drastic change to a loud, cluttered jumble of horns and was complimented with a "whoosh" sound, disgusted fans nicknamed "the flushing sound". Even the Young and the Restless with the timeless Nadia's theme recently made it sexier with a saxophone.
Now, all of the changes aren't too bad. I personally loved the All My Children theme song from the mid nineties and was heartbroken when they changed it. As a fan of Dave Cox, I have no problem with his beautiful song for General Hospital. Now rumor has it, both soaps are again going to change their openings. As one of the few people, who really disliked As the World Turns theme song from the eighties, I was really relieved to hear the first new theme song. Of course now, don't most of the soap theme songs sound the same? Just little variations of piano, saxophones, way too much percussion and sometimes some strings here and there. The uniqueness of all the theme songs has vanished. You used to know whose theme song belonged to whom. Now I bet if we blindfolded half of the CBS viewers and played them the new ATWT and GL theme music, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The same might be true if you blindfolded ABC viewers and then played AMC, OLTL, and PC theme songs.
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