Theme Song and Opening Sequence
The theme song and opening sequence set the premise of the show. Will Smith is a street-smart teenager, born and raised in West Philadelphia, who was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Bel Air, Los Angeles after getting in a fight.
The theme song was written and performed by Smith, as "The Fresh Prince". The music was composed by Quincy Jones, who is credited with Smith at the end of each episode. The music often used to bridge scenes together during the show is based on a similar chord structure. The full version of the theme song was used unedited on some early episodes. The full-length version, which is 2:52", was included on Will Smith's Greatest Hits album and attributed to himself only. A 3:23" version was released in the Netherlands in 1992, and reached #3 on the charts.
For the first few episodes of the show stanzas one to three and stanzas six and seven were used. Beginning with Episode #4 (titled "Not With My Pig, You Don't"), only the first two and the last two stanzas of the song were used. The change to the theme song allowed for longer episodes to be created.
Seasons 1, 5, and 6 featured an instrumental version of the theme and still photographs from the episode for the closing credits. In Seasons 2, 3, and 4, the music and stills were dropped and closing credits would almost always appear over bloopers and outtakes from the episode.
Read more about this topic: The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air
Famous quotes containing the words theme, song, opening and/or sequence:
“If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Commercial to the core, Elvis was the kind of singer dear to the heart of the music business. For him to sing a song was to sell a song. His G clef was a dollar sign.”
—Albert Goldman (b. 1927)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“It isn’t that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history’s meaning.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)