As The World Turns Discussion Thread

[Darn]

The last opening feels so oddly depressing.

[Vee]

All the 2000s P&G soap openings just scream "we don't give a [!@#$%^&*]" to me. It is muzak and flashing faces or scrolls. The precursor to the incredibly bad current GH PowerPoint opening, where literally any recurring player or small child shows up depending on the day, like a slot machine.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Vee

[Fevuh]

Ah, that's the one.  What I felt like was that - at least they're making the show look exciting.  And they still had some of our veterans in it too.  The music was upbeat, interesting.  And I liked the very ending of the music in the opening credits, very easy to take a snippet of it, slow it down, make it sad for music effect during the show.  

[Sapounopera]

I loved the 70s epic intro.

I will always have a soft spot for the 80s opening, because that's the ATWT I got to know and love.

The 90s intro was just fine. It was old school and I can understand why they felt the need to move on from the dynamic 80s one.

I hated all the 00s intros with people looking at the camera. So generic. Every soap did it at the time.

2007 seemed so fresh, dramatic and different. And with a great music theme.

The last one was sad, but I didn't hate it.

[DRW50]

The '90s opening is incredibly depressing to me, but given the state of the show for much of the '90s, it fits, I guess.

[DeliaIrisFan]

What I don't get is why ATWT repeatedly switched theme music altogether.  I guess all the P&G shows did, except EON.  But it's especially glaring with ATWT, because there were themes that lasted a comparatively long time during popular periods and probably got stuck in a lot of casual viewers' ears.

I think the mid-'90s opening and music were fine, but they could have accomplished what they were seemingly going for by bringing back an updated arrangement of the iconic '70s theme.  I can only imagine there would have been a nostalgia factor for those who grew up with ATWT on in their houses.  I'm not musically inclined at all, but I would guess even a subdued remix of the '80s theme could have fit the new tone.  If by that point TPTB would have rather appealed to people whose earliest memories were Steve/Betsy or Holden/Lily.

Instead, they went with something that was at best respectable and classy, but had no emotional association for a lapsed viewer who might have been home and flipping channels one day.  Why?

Edited January 28, 2023 by DeliaIrisFan

[Faulkner]

It really did sound like music you’d hear walking into a funeral. 

The ‘80s sci-fi theme was my jam. These shows really did sacrifice their identities with all these different themes (although ATWT kept the spinning globe as the focus, at least until the cheap-looking golden version in the 2000s). But they were desperately trying to avoid fixing the real problems with these superficial patch-ups.

[TVFAN1144]

I liked the 1999 to 2002 opening.   I thought it was cool having video shots on the globe.  Gave a sense of history 

And the last year let’s just not have a theme song.  Translates as cheap.  And did they really need the extra time to show “good” story?

[DeliaIrisFan]

Awww...I have a weird association with that theme.  I don't believe I had ever watched ATWT before it premiered, but I knew from the soap press that it was the show with so much history.  Every time I caught a glimpse of the show in the mid-'90s, just abut every scene included at least one character who was seemingly related to half a dozen others, and at least on the surface the stories all seemed like to be about realistic subject matter.  I want to say one or more cast members may have even won award(s) for stories Marland had written by the time that music would have been what was played at the ceremony.

All to say, my teenaged brain filed that tune away with the Masterpiece Theatre music.  And it seemed like a serviceable daytime counterpart to the themes of some prestige primetime shows of the era.  By the time CBS started re-airing classic episodes on holidays, I was shocked to hear the '80s theme, although by this point YouTube has given me nostalgia for that one in turn.

[Soapsuds]

I liked the flush opening. Its disappointing we never got the closing credits to it because CBS stop airing them. Luckily on the DVDs released the closing credits were added to the episode.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Soapsuds

[Faulkner]

It’s funny that in the mid-90s everyone wanted to be bigger, younger, and more exciting, yet ATWT went from that epic theme of the Marland era down to this modest, plodding piano theme that screamed “old people’s show.” 

[Soapsuds]

I thought they went too much towards Nadia Theme but it never really worked. The four season opening should've had cast photos.

[victoria foxton]

All three opening versions of "The World Turns On and On" 

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Edited January 28, 2023 by victoria foxton

[DeliaIrisFan]

I was probably the only one in the target age range at the time who was impressed by that lol.  ATWT seemed to me like GL's older (I know, I know, GL was first by a long shot, but you wouldn't have known it going by the cast members who were on the show by then), stable, more popular sibling, even if that popularity was waning.  As other soaps disappointed me, that sense of consistency started to appeal to me.  Even though I never found ATWT compelling long-term whenever I tuned in in those years, and of course it had as much turmoil behind the scenes as the other network/sponsor-owned shows by then.

[Vee]

I'll never understand why they dumped the '80s ATWT theme.

I always hated the cornfield opening. The overly dramatic music did not match the stories at all.