There was a time when a TV show's theme song could carry as much weight as the characters themselves. If you grew up watching Nick at Nite reruns, you probably remember them all—Cheers, Who's the Boss, Growing Pains, Good Times. You can still hear them in your head, word for word.
But Rolling Stone has made a call: the greatest TV theme song of all time belongs to The Jeffersons. And the case is pretty solid.
The song that defined a show
Ja'net DuBois, who played Willona Wood on Good Times, co-wrote "Movin' on Up" with Jeff Barry. She's also the voice—the one that opens the show with "Well, we're movin' on up." It's hard to imagine anyone else singing it. The song became inseparable from the show itself: a rags-to-riches story about George and Louise Jefferson ("Weezy") moving into a Manhattan high-rise after George's dry-cleaning business took off. Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford made the premise sing—a sitcom built on the premise of success and the comedy that comes with it.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat made "Movin' on Up" work was that it did exactly what a theme song should: it told you what the show was about before a single scene played. The music carried optimism. It promised laughs. And it delivered.
That song stayed in the culture longer than most. In 2020, Nelly and the St. Lunatics sampled it for their track "Batter Up," even bringing Sherman Hemsley himself in for a cameo in the video. The theme had enough cultural weight to anchor a song decades later.
There's something worth noticing here: the best TV themes weren't just background music. They were storytelling. They set a mood, established a world, and made you want to stay. "Movin' on Up" did all three—and apparently, it still does.
