Love Boat Theme

The Love Boat was a popular ABC TV show that ran from 1977-1986. It was set on a cruise ship, and followed a few plot lines each week as passengers and crew had various adventures. This song runs about 1:30, and was used to introduce the guest stars and regular characters. In the '70s and '80s, many shows had well-crafted theme songs that introduced the actors and led to the first commercial break. In the '90s, theme songs began to disappear as shows often went right to the action.

This was written by Charles Fox and Paul Williams. Along with Norman Gimbel, Fox also wrote the theme songs for Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, as well as the hit songs "Killing Me Softly With His Song" and "I Got A Name." Williams, who is also an actor and appeared on The Love Boat as a guest star, wrote for many movies, including A Star Is Born and Bugsy Malone, and crafted hits for the Carpenters and Three Dog Night. Williams told us how this song came together: "Charlie Fox gave me this melody, said that it was a new series called The Love Boat, it was about a cruise ship. We honestly didn't think it was going to last 6 weeks. We thought, who's going to watch a series about a cruise ship? And so he sent me the melody, and I thought, what's this all about? It's all about love, you know. Every episode was going to be about these three little stories... you know, meeting and falling in love, going through life stuff. And 'BOM ba da.' It's an important note, it's gotta be an important word. 'Bom, ba dee da da da,' so it's 'boats,' 'ships,' ba dee da da, you know, 'tits,' 'ba dee da da'... There's a lot of stuff you could stick in there, but the thing that seemed to work best is, 'Love, exciting and new, come aboard, we're expecting you.' The first line of the song, and you've got people on board the ship."

In 1976, Williams wrote the Oscar-winning "Evergreen" for the movie A Star Is Born, which begins with the line, "Love, soft as an easy chair." Says Williams, "You know, it's funny, because on stage I sometimes talk about that. I say, 'I'm going to do a medley of two songs that you'll never hear together again, but they're the only two songs I've ever written that begin with the word 'love.'" (Check out our interview with Paul Williams.)