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For some reason, I’ve been thinking about television theme songs. Maybe it’s because they often get stuck in my head. There are plenty I’d happily never hear again, but today I’m interested in the cream of the crop.

Every show still has some kind of theme, whether prestige TV or Adult Swim, but I’m not sure many rise to the level of classic. So I’ll pose the question up front: What is the all-time greatest TV theme song?

Unsurprisingly, I have my own contenders.

Taxi uses Bob James’s “Angela,” composed for the series and later included on his 1978 album Touchdown. I could listen to it on repeat, and the accompanying visuals are literally a loop: a taxicab crossing the Queensboro Bridge. The footage isn’t as long as the theme, so if you pay attention, you can see where it repeats. The track itself is beautiful, melancholy, urban, and gracious, and I’d appreciate it on any occasion.

Sanford and Son features Quincy Jones’s “The Streetbeater,” a buoyant funk workout that captures the irreverent, big-hearted chaos of the Sanford junkyard. Good Times, with music by Dave Grusin and lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, squeezes gospel and soul into about a minute, somehow making “temporary layoffs” enormously satisfying to sing. The lyrics have also inspired decades of guess-the-line confusion. Is it “hangin’ in a chow line” or “hangin’ in and jivin’”? Turns out it’s the latter.

I also love Barney Miller, by Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson, which boasts a bangin’ bass line by session great Chuck Berghofer. John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back,” from Welcome Back, Kotter, became a proper pop hit, reaching number one in 1976. If somebody leaves my airspace for a while and comes back around, it immediately gets lodged in my head. And I have special affection for the closing theme to WKRP in Cincinnati, a hard-rocking guitar strangulator performed by Jim Ellis, who sang phonetic nonsense on the demo that ended up making the cut.

This could easily become Casey’s Favorite ’70s TV Jams, so I’ll toss in The Simpsons. To be clear, I am not a Danny Elfman fan. I find him grating. But this theme is undeniable—instantly recognizable Lydian-mode quirk synchronized to an opening sequence that establishes its singularly askew universe. Whatever I think of Elfman, he nailed the assignment.

Sometimes a theme is bigger than the main song. Everyone knows The Brady Bunch, but I appreciate the musical ecosystem surrounding it: little variations and instrumental motifs deployed as interstitial music. There’s the sad version, the groovy version, the introspective version. A Brady tune for every mood.

Memorability isn’t everything, of course. Family Ties and “Without Us”? God, no thank you. The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You” is welded to Friends while maintaining an independent existence as a demonic earworm. Jonathan Wolff’s synthetic slap bass works perfectly well for Seinfeld. A great piece of music? I don’t think so.

There’s also a difference between a great theme and a smart sync. Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning” wasn’t written for The Sopranos; David Chase personally chose that hamfisted ditty. Still, I’m not going to argue that it doesn’t work. A song can be exactly right for a show without being something I’d otherwise subject myself to.

Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks theme gets the job done and then some. It puts you into the dream state immediately and somehow captures the show’s entire aesthetic. Mark Snow’s X-Files motif needs only a handful of notes to announce its universe. One of my bands in the ’90s was asked to record a rockin’ version for a local TV station to use in advertising bumpers. It was pretty fun hearing our take on broadcast television.

Episodic programming once supported a miniature musical form that needed to establish character, place, mood and identity in 30 to 60 seconds, then survive hundreds of repetitions. Most of us learned these tunes involuntarily. You know where the fills, breaks and horn stabs happen in tracks you haven’t intentionally heard in forty years. These days, we can just hit “Skip Intro.” Themes still exist, but if you regularly blow past them, they’re less likely to become mental fixtures (for better or worse).

So what is the all-time greatest TV theme song? I don’t really know. Today, if I had to pick, I’d choose “Angela,” from Taxi. I could put it on right now and think: I’d like to cover this. Then I’d immediately think: No. It’s perfect. Why would anyone?

Now tell me: what’s your main title?