Jan Hammer and the Top 10 TV Theme Songs of the '80s
7. The Greatest American Hero
One of Post's tunes that was a big hit was his theme from The Greatest American Hero. The show itself, an altogether lame superhero parody, went nowhere fast, lasting only a couple of seasons.
But the theme song, "Believe it or Not," was a hit, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1981. Today, it's pretty much the only thing anyone remembers about the show, except for how fucking stupid star William Katt's perm looked.
6. MacGyver
The driving rock of the MacGyver theme song was terrific at getting the show's audience pumped up to see Richard Dean Anderson paper-clip his way out of another jam each week back in the late '80s and early '90s. The song was written by Randy Edelman, a longtime scorer of films and TV shows who also wrote the awesomely uplifting tearjerker theme to Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, which has been used in approximately 60 billion movie trailers over the years.
5. Dallas
Full disclosure: We don't like Dallas. About 72 percent of the Oklahoma capital's hilariously puffed-up air of blow-dried superiority can be traced back to this campy prime-time soap (the other 28 percent to Tom Landry). Still, much like its namesake, Dallas wasn't all bad, we guess. It did give us this eminently hummable theme song by John Parker, classic enough to be reused for the new series currently airing on TNT.
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