About

The DuckTales Theme is the title song originally featured in the opening sequence of Disney's animated TV series DuckTales. Along with the Moon Theme from the 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game of the same title, the DuckTales main theme has inspired dozens of remixes and genre-crossing covers due to its iconic status as one of the most memorable tunes for children's TV programs.

Origin

The DuckTales main theme was composed by ASCAP award-winning songwriter Mark Mueller and performed by musical artist Jeff Pescetto. Since its introduction with the premiere of the TV show on September 18th, 1987, DuckTales' main theme song has been regarded by critics as one of the most recognizable tunes made for a television program. Aside from the original minute-long version featured in the opening sequence, three additional renditions of varying length were created.

Online Presence

The legacy of the DuckTales theme continued to live on long after the conclusion of the animated TV show in 1990. It has been circulating online since the early 2000s, with the earliest known instance uploaded by YTMND user SSNPGuerrilla^[4] on May 9th, 2004. Between 2004 and 2006, more than 70 sites featuring variations of the DuckTales theme were created on YTMND^[3], including dubbed editions in foreign languages (German, Swedish, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, Japanese).

Spread

During this time, several foreign language renditions of the theme became quite popular as source material for phonetic translation on the site, mainly the Finnish version uploaded by YTMND user Boredalot^[5] on July 30th, 2005, which garnered over 126,000 views in the following ten years.

On January 21st, 2006, YouTuber Logan5^[6] uploaded the earliest known instance of the the animated TV show's opening sequence, followed by another version^[7] uploaded on April 6th, 2007. In aggregate, the two videos racked up over 7.2 million views over the course of the following decade. On August 2013, a high-quality rendition of the original theme song was re-released as part of the official soundtrack for DuckTales: Remastered, the high-definition remake of the 1989 NES video game, which reinvigorated the nostalgic value of the song on the Internet.

Covers & Remixes

On March 25th, 2014, metal rock vocalist Pellek uploaded a heavy metal rendition of the DuckTales theme song, which drew more than 350,000 views in less than two years. That same year on April 26th, PostModern JukeBox uploaded an R&B-influenced slow jam rendition of the song, which gained more than 1.6 million views in less than two years.

Various Examples

Between 2014 and 2015, a number of notable parodies and remixes of the DuckTales theme song emerged on YouTube, including a childhood ruined rendition by CollegeHumor and a humorous remix pairing the song with the music video for Beyonce's 2008 single "Single Ladies."

Search Interest

External References