The ‘I Love Lucy’ Theme Song Has Lyrics?

The opening theme of I Love Lucy goes down in history as possibly the most memorable one that consists of an almost entirely still image. Despite this lack of visual image, the satin backdrop, plush heart, animated script, and most importantly, jaunty orchestral tune are recognizable to just about everyone born between the Great Depression and Nick at Nite.

It took some time to get to that point, though. As we’ve previously reported, the first season of I Love Lucy featured a very different opening theme, most significantly depicting cartoon avatars of Lucy and Ricky gallivanting around a giant pack of Phillip Morris cigarettes, the show’s primary sponsor, and a different song, “The Grand Canyon Suite” by Ferde Grofé’s Jr. For the second season, producers decided the show needed a song that was a little more, uh, New Yorky, bringing us the Eliot Daniel composition that we can all hum.

Only the most dedicated Lucy viewers, however, know that you can also sing it. That wasn’t the case when the song was written, as it was quickly dashed off by Daniel as a favor to producers without even a composer’s credit, which would have put his contract with Fox in hot water. It was the reality everyone accepted until the 25th episode of Season Two, “Lucy’s Last Birthday,” in which Ricky’s efforts to conceal a surprise party from his wife result in her belief that everyone forgot her birthday. She spends most of the episode in despair before stumbling into the party, where Ricky sings her a song “he” wrote for her as a present, casually dropping new lore that raises deeply unwanted questions about the I Love Lucy multiverse:

I love Lucy and she loves me
We’re as happy as two can be
We have our quarrels but then
Oh, how we love making up again
Lucy kisses like no one can
She’s my missus and I’m her man
And life is heaven, you see
‘Cause I love Lucy
Yes, I love Lucy
And Lucy loves me

Sure, it may not be the most complicated song, but the lyrics were written for the episode by Harold Adamson, a songwriter nominated five times for the Oscar for Best Original Song, most notably for the theme to An Affair to Remember. That’s some impressive muscle to throw behind a metaversal gag at the end of the sixth-to-last episode of a 31-episode middle season, which is objectively the funniest time for it.