This Beloved TV Dad Wrote This Beloved TV Theme Song!
You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.
There’s a time you got to go and show
You’re growin’ now you know about
The facts of life, the facts of life.
When the world never seems
to be livin up to your dreams
And suddenly you’re finding out
the facts of life are all about you, you.
It takes a lot to get ’em right
When you’re learning the facts of life. (learning the facts of life)
Learning the facts of life (learning the facts of life)
Learning the facts of life.
We bet you can still sing along to the “Facts of Life” theme song! This iconic TV theme will probably be stuck in our heads forever. And turns out, we have Jason Seaver to thank for it!
That’s right, Alan Thicke, who played Jason Seaver in “Growing Pains” and the father of singer Robin Thicke, co-wrote the “Facts of Life” theme song with his first wife, Gloria Loring, who also sang the song, and composer Al Burton.
Thicke and Loring were quite the team when it came to composing TV theme songs. They also wrote the theme for “Diff’rent Strokes,” “The Joker’s Wild,” “Celebrity Sweepstakes,” and the original theme for “Wheel of Fortune.”
Thicke talked to The A.V. Club in 2010 about his work as a composer, noting he had written over 40 theme songs. “The challenge was, you have 24 seconds to do something catchy and memorable and sum up the entire premise of the show in case somebody had never seen it before. You had to do it with an internal rhyme scheme and a perky little ditty,” he said. “‘The Facts Of Life’ internal rhyme scheme was intricate and one that I remember finishing and saying, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good. That all rhymes. I got a lot of rhyming words in 24 seconds.'”
Now, if you’re wondering whether Thicke also helped write the theme to “Growing Pains,” yes, he did! He co-wrote the song with B.J. Thomas. His son Robin, a judge on “The Masked Singer,” sang the song about a year ago during a TV Theme Night. Thicke passed away in 2016 at the age of 69.
But back to “The Facts of Life!” The theme song is still going strong in our TV Binge Bracket Contest – so be sure to vote for your favorite for the chance to win $500!
