Like any good Cincinnatian, I loved WKRP in Cincinnati, and...

Like any good Cincinnatian, I loved WKRP in Cincinnati, and especially it’s well-crafted theme song.  You’ve probably heard it a hundred times, but never looked closely at just how neatly it was made.

It starts:

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered,
Wondered whatever became of me,

I like the W alliteration, but wait a minute … did he just repeat the word “wondered” in order to make the lyrics fit?  Seems pretty sloppy right?

I’m living on the air in Cincinnati,
Cincinnati, WKRP.

 … except that repetition is repeated with the double “Cincinnati,” turning lazy song-writing into pleasing parallelism.  Genius.  By the way … when he says he’s “living on the air,” that tell us a ton, doesn’t it?  This is a man who defines his life by his profession.  When is he alive?  When he’s talking into a mic.  That’s when he’s alive.  Think about that, for a moment.  Is he alive when he’s talking to friends, family, loved-ones?  No.  He’s alive when he’s sitting alone, in a booth, talking to strangers he can’t seen and doesn’t know.

Got kind of tired packing and unpacking,
Town to town and up and down the dial

Whoa, there’s a lot going on here.  “Packing and unpacking” is a pleasing repetition of words, and it’s followed by “town to town”—another repeating words.  Then you’ve got the town/down rhyme, and that’s just an internal rhyme.  We still have the word dial sitting out there.  Is that going to pay off with a rhyme?  You bet it will.

But before we move on, can we just admire the idea of movement by both city and dial position?  In two lines, the writer has perfectly captured the life of an itinerant DJ, right? 

Maybe you and me were never meant to be,
But baby think of me once in awhile.

I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati..

Hold on.  Is this a love song?  Because the writer had already perfectly captured the life of the wandering DJ, and you’d think that would be enough to be the theme of the song … but no, it’s not enough … it’s also a love song.  Or at least a song about lost love.  But that’s the only kind of love a wandering DJ can have, right?  And there you have the essence of the dilemma of the disc jockey’s life.

That’s all well and good, but what about the rhymes?  Dial pays off with “awhile,” but you know that was coming.  You didn’t, however, see the cascade of internal rhyme that comes before it.  Maybe/baby.  Yep.  But also “you and me” and “meant to be.”  Plus, we’ve got the word “me” in the middle of each line, serving as the fulcrum for this auditory teeter-totter.

There are not a lot of words in this song, but they are all awesome.  And while I sometimes hear people singing this song, I’ve never heard anyone sing the praises of this song.  To say it’s a great television theme song is to insult it; it’s a great song, period.