Diff'rent Strokes

Jay Dreyer

2 minute read

Song:Diff'rent Strokes
Artist:Alan Thicke
Release Date:1978

How did this happen?

Earworms can infect from many sources. Not just the radio, or XM, or your iPod. They can come from TV show theme songs, too. And, oh boy, do those stick around forever. Especially when there was no fast-fowarding through it. You had to sit and watch at a specific time and if that meant sitting through the theme song, that’s what we did. This was planted in my brain by a co-worker today, and then I re-did the lyrics to indicate that it takes diff’rent database systems to rule the world (yes it does). I’m sorry in advance. Really.

Go ahead. Let’s hear it.

Extended version:

Regular version with video:

So about the song…

That’s two versions to really bore into your skull. They are also missing the “Mmmmmmmmm” part at the end, but that’s ok. Maybe I imagined that.

The fascinating thing about the song is it was written (music and lyrics) by none other than Alan Thicke. He also wrote the theme songs for a bunch of other shows including The Facts of Life, The Joker’s Wild and the original Wheel of Fortune theme. All that and he played Jason Seaver on Growing Pains. RIP, Alan Thicke!

Now for a word on Diff’rent Strokes. I watched an episode a couple months back and I was absolutely blown away by how great Gary Coleman was on that show. As a kid I didn’t really appreciate it. He was funny, he was cute, he said the catch-line. All good. But re-watching him perform, it was amazing how good he was at such a young age. At his peak he was making $100,000 an episode. That was probably around 1984 or 1985. If you get a chance to watch an episode on MeTV, do it. As long as it’s not one of the later ones with Sam. Oh man did I hate Sam. If you can’t find MeTV, you can buy the dvd at Amazon for $5 or something.

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  • TV
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