Plenty of songs have been made famous by a TV show, such as the universally known “Friends” theme song, “I’ll Be There for You,” by the Rembrandts. The theme song to “The Big Bang Theory” is another instantly recognizable one. The iconic tune, officially titled “The History of Everything,” was written and performed by the Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies. But while the fast-paced abridgement viewers hear on the sitcom is usually thought of as a fun, upbeat, and silly tune, the rest of the song is anything but that. The lyrics to the theme song are actually a little scary and kind of sad, as they predict the death of the universe.
The part of the song used in “The Big Bang Theory” fits in perfectly with the theme of the show and Sheldon’s (Jim Parsons) string theory research since it refers to the time before the Big Bang and the creation of life. As fans of the show know, the lyrics start off with, “Our whole universe was in a hot, dense, state / Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait.” But the full version of the track takes a dark turn, following this up by predicting that the world will be plunged into chaos by deadly viruses. It also postulates that the universe as we know it will eventually end due to a big implosion.
These lyrics — “It’s expanding ever outward but one day / It will pause and start to go the other way / Collapsing ever inward, we won’t be here, it won’t be heard / Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang” — come with a complete tonal shift, making the song much sadder than the abridgement “The Big Bang Theory” lets on.
Barenaked Ladies had some legal trouble with the Big Bang Theory theme song
Ed Robertson and Tyler Stewart, current vocalists in the band Barenaked Ladies, were pretty thrilled when “The Big Bang Theory” co-creators Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre approached them about writing the sitcom’s theme song back in 2006. Speaking to CBS News, Robertson explained that this came about after the TV producers attended a show of theirs in LA. “Just by coincidence, I had just finished a book by Simon Singh about the Big Bang theory, about cosmological theory,” Robertson explained. “So I’d made up a song in the show about cosmological theory, and these guys were developing the [TV] show. They looked at each other in the audience and said, ‘We gotta get these guys to write the theme song,’ so it was pretty serendipitous.”
However, a few years later, “The Big Bang Theory” theme song landed the Barenaked Ladies in court. Founding member Steven Page was a part of the band at the time they recorded “The History of Everything,” but he left the group in 2009. Six years later, in 2015, he sued his former bandmates on the grounds that they weren’t paying him the royalties he was owed for the song because Robertson was keeping the money for himself. He claimed he was owed around $1 million for his 20% share, but the case was quickly thrown out by the judge. It’s unclear if any money changed hands between Robertson and Page, but if it did, it happened behind closed doors. But Page did reunite with his bandmates for a one-off performance in 2018, so it seems all the legal drama is now behind them.
