Whether you’re a fan of MTV’s Ridiculousness or not, you have to admit the theme song is catchy. It makes sense why the opening track is so good, too. It was put together by DEVO’s Mark Mothersbaugh years ago, and the final cut of the song is a reworking of the song “Uncontrollable Urge”, which appears as the opening track of the legendary 1978 album Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
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When he wasn’t actively the brains behind DEVO, Mothersbaugh contributed quite a lot of energy and time to scoring movies and creating jams for television programs. Fortunately for him, Ridiculousness is one of the most-aired television shows of all time, at least on MTV. His contribution of the opening theme has been his biggest earner, allegedly pulling in almost $1 million per year in royalties.
Mothersbaugh sat down with Rolling Stone recently, where he talked about the surprising success of the reworked intro to Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! as Ridiculousness’s theme song. He compared the success of the reworked “Uncontrollable Urge” to DEVO’s (more or less) only major hit, “Whip It”.
“I’ve written so many other songs for films and television shows,” said Mothersbaugh. “I would’ve been shocked [years ago] if you told me this is the one that would become this prime source of income. […] MTV stopped playing us but we came to the other side of the circle. It’s a nice ironic twist because this was one of the songs we never even made a music video for. And now it’s maybe the most-played song ever on MTV.”
The ‘Ridiculousness’ Hit Theme Came Years After MTV Began Snubbing Music Videos from DEVO
Mothersbaugh’s wife and manager, Anita Greenspan, also added that while MTV was all for DEVO’s contributions to the network in terms of early music videos, the company started “questioning the videos DEVO were making.”
“[The videos] were subversive, they didn’t like them and wouldn’t play them anymore,” said Greenspan. “Now ‘Uncontrollable Urge’ is easily the most-played song on MTV, so [DEVO] wins.”
It’s a great thing for Mothersbaugh and the legacy of DEVO, though it’s hard not to be surprised. Nobody could have anticipated that Rob Dyrdek’s comedy show would become the most-aired show on MTV, nor that it would be as addicting as it is.
Ridiculousness isn’t the only show to pull in some big bucks for Mothersbaugh and DEVO. Elsewhere in the interview, he mentioned that his Rugrats theme song paid for his house in the 1990s. Good for him, honestly.
Photo by John Shearer/WireImage
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