The ‘South Park’ Theme Song Began with Trey Parker and Matt Stone Fighting Over CDs

It’s hard to imagine South Park without the familiar jangly theme song. Early seasons of the show, the intro featured a straw hat-wearing cartoon Les Claypool, singing about going down to South Park to meet some friends of his. And while the opening animation has changed several times over the years, that melody has remained a constant. 

How did the show end up with this off-beat, yet ultimately iconic opening number? 

Claypool, whose band Primus performed the track, recently spoke with musician and YouTuber Rick Beato about the tune’s origin. “Those guys were big Primus fans,” Claypool said of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. “As they were making the South Park pilot, they would listen to different music. And the only one they could all agree on was Primus.”

During the lengthy animation process for the show’s handmade series premiere, “Cartman Gets An Anal Probe,” Parker and Stone worked to the sounds of Primus CDs, but not because they were thinking of using any of it on the show. “They were just, like, listening to it as they’re working (for) countless hours with crate paper (cut-outs). And like dudes do, you put on some music.”

“Trey liked one thing, and Matt liked another thing,” Claypool continued. “But the one thing they could agree on, from what I was told, was Primus. So they thought, ‘Oh wow, what if we got Primus to do this?’”

Primus agreed to record the South Park theme song, but the band wasn’t very optimistic about the future of the cartoon. “We never thought it would get on television or anything. Because we just saw The Spirit of Christmas and thought, ‘Ah that’s hilarious, these college kids!’ And we did it.”

Primus initially sent Parker and Stone a “much slower” version of the song, which is what we hear during South Park’s end credits.

“So they got it, and they said, ‘We love this, this is great, but Comedy Central thinks it’s too slow. Can you do another version that’s faster?’” Claypool explained. “And we’re like, ‘Well, we’re on tour. You know, these guys are not even gonna get on television.’ We’re like, ‘Just speed it up.’ So they sped it up.”

The show’s creators then visited the band during one of their tour stops, and had Claypool re-record his vocal track “into a little tape recorder” in order to match the faster version of the song. “And they took it back, put it together, and they took over the world,” Claypool recalled.