Mr. Robot’s “New” Theme Song Was Actually Created By TGIF Veterans
Title sequences of ABC’s family programming during the late 80’s and early 90’s had a sameness to them. A bombastic, overly cheery theme song, characters turning to the camera and smiling; even the font displaying their names was always the same. This is because nearly every single TGIF program from that era was created by the same production company, Miller-Boyett Productions.
Flash forward 20 years later, and the eerie sense of lockstep conformity those main titles gave off is now the butt of jokes. And no one smashes conformity like Mr. Robot. The show took things one step further last night and rendered the first 20 minutes of their program in the Miller-Boyett style, complete with a Full House-ish main title. What you probably didn’t know until you started reading this page is that Sam Esmail and the crew had special help: to make things fully authentic, they enlisted the help of the songwriters who created the original sitcom themes!
Bennett Salvay and Jesse Frederick wrote the theme songs for Full House, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers and Step by Step (and also Going Places, if you remember that one). Staff writer Adam Penn tells Vulture that Esmail is a perfectionist and had to get as close to the actual TGIF sitcom feel as he could, so he reached out to Salvay and Frederick.
“We had a few meetings with them in which we discussed the themes to touch upon in the song. They then presented us with some variations on lyrics, as well as a demo. Once all of the elements were agreed upon, Bennett and Jesse went off to record the final version which, in my opinion, is perfection. It takes me back to my TGIF-watching days, while also integrating shades that are uniquely Mr. Robot.”
Penn also discusses how they arranged the appearance from this episode’s special guest star, but just in case some of you haven’t seen the episode yet, I’m not revealing who that was. The full interview is at Vulture.