Composer Says Simpsons Theme Song “Easiest Thing I’ve Ever Done”
Composer Danny Elfman said The Simpsons theme was “the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” adding that composing the infamous theme song “was immediate; there were no notes, no changes, no suggestions.” The 62-year-old composer has written scores and songs for dozens of films and television shows. He has won an Emmy, a Grammy, and has been nominated for four Oscars for writing original scores for Good Will Hunting, Men In Black, Big Fish, and Milk. Yet the most widely heard piece of his career is likely the theme song from The Simpsons.
In an interview with Vulture, he recalls being called into a meeting with Simpsons creator Matt Groening.
“He showed me a pencil sketch of the opening of The Simpsons and it felt very retro and crazy, what I remember growing up on. I told him, ‘If you want something contemporary, I’m not the guy for that. But if you want something like a crazy Hanna-Barbera that never was, then I think I’m the right guy.’
Groening thought Elfman was the right guy. Elfman did not spend much time on the piece that some news outlets have called one of the best TV theme songs in history. “I literally wrote the piece in the car on my way home from the meeting, in my head. I ran down to my studio and within a couple of hours, I wrote all the parts on a multi-track. Then I sent the cassette back to Matt, and I think I got a call the next day saying, ‘Yeah, that’s it.'”
Even after Elfman’s piece was accepted, he doubted that tune would ever be heard. “I didn’t expect anybody to see The Simpsons. I didn’t think it would last more than one season, if it even lasted one season. So I did it purely for fun. That silly moment would become this major defining moment in my life. It’s amazing. It’s ironic.”
It is ironic that the man who has more than 100 films credited to him tells Vulture that he would be not surprised if his epitaph read: Wrote The Simpsons Theme.
In case you’ve just emerged from a 25-year coma, here’s the classic theme song, split-screened from how it appeared in 1991 and 2013.
