Do You Skip Intro? – The New York Times

I am, or I was, an “Orange Is The New Black” watcher. And it’s got this great opening credit sequence with this song by Regina Spektor.

And it plays over this montage of faces. Some of these people have piercings, and they’ve got beauty marks and freckles and wrinkles and eyeliner, beautiful, gapped teeth. This wave of humanity is just washing over you, and it’s kind of moving and exhilarating. I am emotional before the show even starts most episodes.

And during one of these seasons, I’m watching the show, and I notice in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, there’s a little button that says “skip intro.” And I’m like, oh, well, that’s interesting. I now have the option to skip past this opening credit sequence that I love — and this song which I have come to accept as basically an elemental part of myself. I have the option to just move right past that and get to the show? Are they saying Regina Spektor is wrong and that I don’t have time?

Oh, no. Oh, no, what are we doing here? But I will admit that I clicked it. And I instantly felt small in my own lack of patience and dignity. So I feel terrible about myself. I don’t like it. I don’t like skip intro, and I don’t like me when I press it. I shouldn’t have the option.

So on today’s show, we’re going to talk about TV theme songs, why you shouldn’t skip over them because they can be a signal or a portal or even some moment of transcendence between you and the show that you’re watching. Sometimes they can be the whole show. Hans, our great producer, play our theme song.

I’m Wesley Morris. I’m a culture writer at The New York Times. And this is Still Processing.

Hanif Abdurraqib, I am so thrilled for you to be on this show because you’re a culture critic, poet, deep-ass thinker and a MacArthur genius. But I’m setting all that aside to just ask you one simple question. Do you use the skip intro button?

Well, first off, it’s really great to talk to you as always. And to disappoint you, I do use the skip intro button.

Uh-oh. Well, I mean, I think that my problem with this skip intro thing is when I experience art, I want it to happen to me. I do not want to be happening to the art, because it kind of turns your viewing experience into a video game.

It does, but —

It can.

It can. But you know what? As someone who is currently in the midst of replaying the game “Red Dead Redemption” —

OK.

— there are parts of that game that I skip. If I need to go somewhere in that video game, and I need to get on my horse and ride my horse for 10 minutes to get to another location, I’m going to choose the “fast travel” option probably, because I just want to get to the pleasure that I sat down seeking out.

But let me ask you this. Are you somewhat — because, one thing I’m encountering with theme songs, too, is when there is an intro scene before the song comes on. I just started watching “1883.”

Oh, right. “1883,” the spinoff of “Yellowstone” that’s basically a super-violent western.

Yes, very violent western. The first five minutes of that show are just wild, real intense, alarmingly violent.

— but really visually stunning.

And then there was kind of a theme song break. It’s like high intensity interval training or something. I already revved myself up. It’s like, well, now I got to get back into this thing, back emotionally. You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that theme song is a bit of a drag.

But to kind of contradict myself in terms of the cold open flowing into the intro song, another show that does this that I actually love is “Yellowjackets” —

Yes!

— the Showtime drama about a high school soccer team that is stranded in the woods of Canada and resorts to all kinds of gruesome methods of survival.

And the conceit of the show is that that’s happening in 1996. And then there are these cuts back and forth between then and the soccer team today as adults.

archived recording

(SINGING) Oh, so cute. So revival, so alone. Birthday suit, just a smile —

It always came at a time where I would think, I maybe need a break before getting back into this.

Like you need a second to recover from the fact that people are eating dirt, eating each other, performing surgery on each other. Yes, you need a break.

And also, the visuals that go along with it are kind of fascinating.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

For those of us who grew up with VCRs that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, it does invoke this kind of warped visual, like putting a tape in the VCR and the tape kind of unwinding a bit. And so you get these scattered, sometimes blurry, sometimes staticky images that are interspersed with images that are cut through really clearly. So you’ll get like, here’s someone smiling on a soccer field. And here’s a severed deer head.

Right, right. I mean, the thing that I love about that sequence is the someone smiling on a soccer field is my favorite image in it. It’s one of the characters. She’s just doing a little attitudinal pose. And it’s so that character. And it’s so — you know exactly who that girl is, right?

I also think the “Yellowjackets” song is kind of a grounding exercise because of the way the visuals are spliced, where it’s like, there are moments in the show that will seem serene but there is always something ominous just around the corner that you are going to be exposed to.

I actually think this theme song understands what this show is maybe better than the people who made it. And another show that does exactly what you just said, Hanif, is the theme song for “White Lotus.” That opening credits sequence is fantastic.

Yeah.

It just sounds like — it sounds cuckoo. You know? And you’re getting all of these images of wallpaper and tropical tourist trap souvenir, you know, aesthetic design Hawaii, right? It’s something fake about the environment or false or commercial about the environment we’re about to go into. And this song really captures that lunacy.

And the show is about what happens when a bunch of different Americans land at a Hawaiian resort and all of the trouble they wind up causing its guests. I knew that this theme song thinks the people or the experience we’re about to have is nutty, kooky, but very well-composed in some way.

This is a theme song where I did have the option to skip it. And I found myself not doing it all that much. I think there’s something about the sinister image as a lead up to a show that does not seem sinister on its surface, at least not at first.

Right, yeah. I mean, all the satire to me that allegedly is happening on that show is entirely incisively contained in this song, which we should say that Cristobal Tapia de Veer wrote.

So let’s talk about what we’re actually talking about here though, because what a theme song is actually doing is, the song is essentially this — I don’t know. It’s like a maitre d’. It’s like a vestibule. It’s a mud room. It’s this place where you get settled. You get ready. You take off your coat. You take off your shoes. You get led to your table, right? I like that kind of service.

Well, OK, so I realized a couple of weeks ago that I don’t leave my house out of my front door very often. I bought my house at the very beginning of the pandemic. So I don’t have that kind of — I used to travel all the time and all these things. And coming home was a real beautiful experience. And the reentry into my house is a real warm experience. And I just don’t have that relationship with entry and exit out of my front door anymore at all.

A photographer came to my house to take some photos for the paper. And he was kind of looking around my house, like, oh, wow, there’s some — he said, there’s some beautiful wallpaper in your entryway here, in your front doorway. Do you ever notice that?

And was like, well, no, no. And he took these photos to me in front of the wallpaper. And I remember looking at them thinking, that is stunning. And I just never appreciated it because I don’t think about it. Because I don’t — when I enter and exit my house, it’s always associated with, all right, I got 20 bags of groceries, and I just have to get through this threshold and get them on the ground or whatever. Or my dog is running at me and I have to ensure that she doesn’t run out of the house.

And so I guess the theme song acts as almost the wallpaper — where, when I do notice it, if it’s something that I can pause and notice and I enjoy it, I’m thrilled. But otherwise, it’s kind of like a border between me and something that I have to do or something that I feel like I am driven to do. But it is nice to notice it when it comes along if it’s wonderful enough.

Oh, Hanif, that was perfect. And I’m going to tell you something. This next segment is for you. We’re going to lock you in the house and cover you with some classic, golden age TV theme song wallpaper. We’ll be right back.

Hanif Abdurraqib, I’d like to introduce you to one of our producers, Hans Buetow.

Hi, Hans.

Hello, Hanif. Hello, Wesley.

Hans, do you want to talk about what you’re about to do to us, please?

Um, no.

OK.

I don’t. I just want to do it.

All right, let’s do it.

archived recording

(SINGING) Good times!

Aaaahhh! Oh, this was written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, the venerated songwriting duo.

This is actually one of the first theme songs I ever heard. It’s one of the first sitcoms I ever knew.

Same here, same here.

Woo!

Oh gosh.

Yes! It just got hot in here, Hanif.

I dated someone who had this as their ringtone.

And that’s the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” I can see Will Smith being spun around in the air.

Yeah, I mean it brings all of the visuals of the intro.

Yeah.

Oh, yes. This is top five.

This is top five?

Top five.

This is Ja’Net DuBois, right?

Yes, it is Ja’Net DuBois. Willona from “Good Times” cowrote this song and is singing it, yes.

Ha ha, yes. “Three’s Company” was my favorite bad show. And I loved it because I loved this song, right?

Yeah.

This song so perfectly captures that weird kind of cheesy — like you would never expect these people to be in a porno, but they’re doing it.

archived recording

(SINGING) What would you do if I sang out of tune —

Oh, here’s another one, Hanif. This is “The Wonder Years,” the original “The Wonder Years.”

It’s Joe Cocker, yeah.

This is Joe Cocker covering the Beatles, TV theme song: “Wonder Years,” ABC, 1980s.

Oh, my god, Hanif, how do you feel listening to that?

I mean “The Wonder Years” is one of the first shows I absolutely loved. It played into all my impulses as someone who wanted to be a storyteller. But that theme song — I didn’t know who Joe Cocker was. I didn’t know — at the time, of course, I didn’t know it was originally a Beatles song. It just — that song was kind of like a bell to me. I’d be out of school. I would finish my homework, and someone would have on TV, and I would hear that song. And it was like, now my free time begins.

[LAUGHS] You know, it’s funny because I think a prolonged exposure to these things makes them more than a vestibule, right? They kind of become the whole house in some way, right? I mean, you play me “The Jeffersons” theme song, and it’s like the show is contained in the song — like every memory I have of that show is just right there in that song.

Yeah.

OK, Hanif and Wesley, I got one last thing that I would like to present to you all.

Yes, Hans.

It’s something that I found while I was researching this episode and pulling all of this stuff that really struck me. And I just want to know how it’s going to strike you all.

So we’re looking at a cellphone video of a bunch of people in a space. These people are in a cramped room. They are Black men and women. The hair’s looking good. The outfits are great. Hanif, where do you think we are?

We are backstage at what I’m guessing is the Beverly Hills Performing Arts Center, given the poster on the wall that says Beverly Hills Performing Arts Center.

So my guess is this is a choir about to go on stage. But what’s important is what they’re about to sing. So let me play this for you.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

[LAUGHS]

Oh my god.

Oh, my goodness.

I just feel like that is — sorry [SNIFFS] I always have wanted to cry when I hear that song. Like it is — it’s funny because white people wrote it. But there is something about hearing Black people sing about just the — oh man — the truth. There’s something so true in that song. And when just hearing the full life being given it, I just hear so much more than that song and that show. It transcends the construct of a sitcom, right?

Yeah, yeah, that song also holds an understanding that goodness and satisfaction with one’s life is not necessarily aligned with what one has at the moment — particularly for Black folks who know that there is always something underneath the immediacy of what they have, where it’s like, all right, well, we got this box of rice and a tomato. But a meal’s coming out of that. You know what I’m saying?

And the person who makes the meal does it with love. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I mean, would you ever hit skip intro on that?

No, particularly not if that choir was singing it, but even if it’s in its original form, I’m not hitting skip intro on the “Good Times” theme song.

The other thing about what we just watched was that is their warm-up song.

Yeah.

That is the thing that they’re using to set their own tone. But that is such a great example of what a TV theme song is and can do. They can make you brim with happiness. Because I just want to be clear. We’re not talking about nostalgia. I think these songs have a purpose that is more than some obligation that TV shows once had. Something about the prolonged exposure of you to this music creates this very simple snapshot of memories.

Yeah, well, and the theme song with some distance from it can also act as a portal. So when I hear any version of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” not just the Cocker version, but the Beatles version or any subsequent versions, I’m taken back to the entire world of “The Wonder Years.” The final episode, Kevin’s New York Jets jacket — these kind of memories that to me exist in a deeper space in nostalgia because I’m not just saying, wasn’t it great that I sat down and watched this show when I was a kid? I’m also really dragged back to these exciting and tactile memories.

So the song as portal I think expands an understanding of what nostalgia is and can be. And that’s a useful exercise I think.

That’s a memory.

Exactly.

So it’s such an American act to just sort of skip past a memory to just consume.

Now I feel guilty. Now I feel immense guilt for my intro-skipping impulses, and I will work to correct them.

Oh, come on, Hanif, don’t feel guilty at all. I mean, I do it too. We’re all doing it. But I just think that we should just be more conscientious about it when we do do it, because part of the reason we both had that reaction to the “Good Times” theme song was because we’d heard it so many times that it is now a part of us. And I think what happens when we skip intro, what we’re denying is the possibility of having this connection with a show that becomes bigger and more meaningful than the show itself.

[MUSIC]

Hanif Abdurraqib, poet, curator for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, author of the wonderful essay collection, “A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance,” thank you so much for doing this with me. Jenna Wortham thanks you.

Thank you so much. And please give Jenna my love.

Oh, she’s getting it.

That’s our show. And before we get all the way gone, we have got a giant “Still Processing” bonus prize. If anybody in the audience can tell us more about that choir warming up to the “Good Times” theme song, we would love to know. So there’s a link to the video in the show notes and anybody who can help us make this connection is going to get something real good coming to them. We would really appreciate it.

“Still Processing” is produced by Elyssa Dudley and Hans Buetow, edited by Sarah Sarasohn and Sasha Weiss. The show was mixed by Marion Lozano and recorded by Maddy Masiello. Digital production by Mahima Chablani, Des Ibekwe and June Oh. And our theme music is by Kindness. It’s called “World Restart” from the album “Otherness.” We’re here next week. See you then.