Hello Fellow Kids, It’s Me, the New <em>Morning Edition</em> Theme
On Thursday evening, a scene that surely played itself out all across America this week—in kitchens, car interiors, and waiting rooms—was repeated in the greenroom of the Neue Galerie in New York. The classical composer Timo Andres and the jazz singer Theo Bleckmann stood and listened to two pieces of music: the old theme for National Public Radio’s flagship morning-news show, Morning Edition, and the new one.
The old theme—known for its inquisitive guitar and jazz piano—went off the air last week after 40 years of service. It was replaced on Monday with a new one that churns through dozens of ideas in 58 seconds: a trip-hop remix of the old melody, a synthesized set of chimes conveying either urgency or the imminent arrival of an elevator, and a clatter of percussion that sounds “global” without evoking any one country in particular.
“For me, it was so reminiscent of childhood, of car rides to school,” Andres told me later of the old theme. “Even though, objectively, it sounds like an artifact from a universe where Steely Dan was co-opted into writing state-propaganda music.”
The new theme, meanwhile, was summarized more pithily by Bleckmann. “Yeah, it sucks,” he said.
Pandemonium struck the airwaves this week as ’s millions of listeners tried to accommodate themselves to the new, unasked-for change in their daily routine. They did not take to it well. More than 400 listeners emailed NPR with complaints, , its public editor. “The vast majority of the reaction has been negative,” she wrote.
