Rating 500+ Theme Tunes - #4: Animaniacs
Have you ever wondered who the Warner Bros. are? Well, they were probably some real guys but they're also two... creatures of some form, and they even have a sister! These are the Animaniacs! Yakko, Wakko, & Dot Warner live in the Warner Bros. water tower, and our the main characters of this 90's classic. The show features all sorts of comedic segments with all sorts of characters however, even being the origin of the infamous Pinky & The Brain. I'd liken this show to a sketch comedy show in a way, with wall-to-wall jokes and a variety of settings.
Now, Animaniacs is the first show thus far that was truly before my time. It's original run finished four whole years before my birth. I'll give you a sentence to process that. While I haven't watched full episodes of the show, I did watch the Pinky & The Brain standalone show and I'm also familiar with many segments from the show. I frequently listen to Yakko Warner's Nations of the World and Wakko Warner's America.
The show seems like an absolute hoot from everything I see, absolutely something I would get a lot of enjoyment from. It always makes me laugh! It's pretty weird too that Steven Spielburg is behind Animaniacs! That man really got around. Anyway, while we're here, I also haven't seen the revival series. We don't even get Hulu in the UK.
This song goes so goddamn hard. I can't even lie. One of the biggest earworms I have ever heard in the history of intros. Everytime I find myself singing it! Just everything about this one makes me love this show, which is really exactly what you want. So much of the humour comes across perfectly in this song, even including a line about the characters' "pay-for-play contracts"! The meta-humour, the quick-humour, and while it can't influence my decision here, the physical humour of the animation is all perfect. Big brassy and mischievous instrumentals tie it all together brilliantly, making it that classic Warner Bros. cartoon mayhem for the audience of the 90's, with pop-culture of the time and fourth-wall breaks aplenty. This show and this theme knows what it is and wants to use that fully to its advantage.
An absolutely delightful intro. This one has to be an S-tier for me. Those are the facts!
Stay tuned for more and be sure to send in any suggestions for other shows you'd like to see done (after the 500 already in the pipeline that is). Check out the intro to this series here, and now, the tier list.