Power Ranking Power Rangers: 9 Theme Songs from Bad to Best
#9: Power Rangers Mystic Force
Only included on this list to mention that it sounds like a bad 3Oh!3 rip. One of the most embarrassing themes in a franchise which has few true embarrassments (instead opting for bland reiterations of previous themes.) Mystic Force is the worst tendency of Power Rangers’ composers in one song: that drive to catch the zeitgeist with tepid chart-pop swagger jacks.
#8: Power Rangers Operation Overdrive
Operation Overdrive is an embarrassment in almost diametric opposition to Mystic Force: it inexplicably apes nerdcore, sounding like a bad MC Frontalot homage seven years after ‘Nerdcore Hip Hop’ gave script kiddies permission to listen to rap. Christ. It’s just a huge mistake.
#7: Power Rangers Lost Galaxy
Inon Zur and Lior Rosner were two of the most prolific soundtrack composers for the whole franchise. Starting with Turbo and In Space respectively (both shit themes), they soundtracked hundreds of episodes until their departures in the early aughts. But Lost Galaxy was their first masterpiece. Opening with that power ballad-y “POWER RAAAAAANGERRRRRRS LOST GALAXYYYYYYY” it morphs into a chugging rock song that slams into its chorus, that ascending melody sounding like an accelerating engine, pow-ER-RAN-GERS! with the beat punching through every syllable. And then it ends with another repeat of that opening ballad-y bit, which is so fuckin’ corny I can’t help loving it. Lyrically this is where Power Rangers theme songs started to get real wordy. After Lost Galaxy, themes got downright pregnant with platitudes about the Rangers’ heroics, not realising that sick riffs speak loud enough.
#6: Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue
Rosner, Zur and their collaborators refined the formula of Lost Galaxy here. Once again it’s ballad, chug, chorus chug, only this time they had the sense to drop the cornball emotive grasp at the end. Lightspeed Rescue is also a lot tighter than Lost Galaxy, you’ve kinda got your verses, choruses, and a bridge, and this was also the first stab a Power Rangers theme took at pop-punk; at the turn of the aughts you had that first wave of cute bubblegum punk derros like Blink 182 showing up everywhere and Power Rangers tried to capitalise. Lightspeed Rescue continues Lost Galaxy’s interminable lyrical fluff with couplets on the level of “Power’s on its way / Rangers save the day,” but it’s a serviceable shoutalong.
#5: Power Rangers Wild Force
Inon Zur having ended his run with the previous series Time Force, Wild Force was the first time a Power Rangers theme had a little new blood in half a decade. Paul Gordon, the latter day B-52s keyboardist and New Radicals pianist who previously featured on Turbo’s soundtrack, helped Lior Rosner blend the pop-punk edge of the previous themes with alt-rock, making it one of the drummiest themes in the franchise. It’s not especially novel or even memorable, but it still rips.
#4: Power Rangers Ninja Storm
This is when Power Rangers moved to New Zealand, so Antipodean teens watching this after school could hear folks who sounded just like ’em wearing the neon spandex for the first time. The ninja shit is a return to the mythology which made the first Power Rangers movie so wicked and not the last time the series would plumb this well, but for obvious reasons, this is its most focused execution. Notable for the line “They’ll have to brave the weather / Stand together,” and its wave-yr-lighter-in-the-air chorus, it’s the last time Power Rangers had a pop-punk theme for several years when Dino Thunder and SPD brought the metal back.
#3: Power Rangers Jungle Fury
Starring ex-Home & Away hotnerd Jason Smith in the red suit, Jungle Fury was a surprise return to form, at least as far as its music. Finally retreating to what worked with pop-punk, in 2008, Jungle Fury’s theme sounded downright nostalgic. You have to understand that the reclamation of pop-punk hadn’t started yet, so old assholes like me who grew up listening to the Real Shit were too busy delineating who ruined Warped Tour to cop listening to All Time Low. This is when The Academy Is… were leaving power chord whinging behind to go pop, Fall Out Boy were going high art, My Chemical Romance were preparing for Fabulous Killjoys — pop-punk in the traditional sense was a terrible insult. But if you were watching Jungle Fury, you weren’t operating with a whole lotta indie cred anyway, so it didn’t matter. Jungle Fury’s soundtrack goes hard on the shounen-level Try Your Best thematics too, making it one of the more light-hearted songs in the catalogue after the putrid seriousness the series had been enduring.
#2: Power Rangers Samurai
So after Jungle Fury, Power Rangers entered its most fallow state: RPM’s grim tone undid all the goodwill Jungle Fury had cobbled, then Saban remastered Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers with schlocky new special effects, and then there was Power Rangers Samurai. Samurai’s theme is a blatant rip on the flawless original theme. The mixing flattens the riffs all the better to hear the unconvincing whinge of whoever composer Noah Kaniel got on vocals. It’s also a shocking return to the samurai mythology of the earlier series, so it all reeks of trying to shore up the series relevance two decades into its run with the safety of the familiar. But!
Funnily enough, it worked. Saban had bought Power Rangers back from Disney after RPM and hooked up with Nickelodeon to broadcast Samurai, making it a slam dunk reintroduction to the series for a new generation using all the elements which made it great in the first place. Apparently it averaged two mil viewers an episode and it’s one of the highest rated series in the franchise, so fuck me, right?
Samurai was also the start of Power Rangers’ reboot, which is why it’s pointless to talk about any of the themes that came after — the whole thing starts again. Peaking with Super Megaforce, the premise of which involves the Rangers being able to morph into any previous Ranger in the entire history of Power Rangers, the twentytweens had Power Rangers finally find its footing after languishing in irrelevance. The production values were off the fucking charts and they are still making new series. Wanna see how the wheel keeps spinning? The series that followed Super Megaforce was Dino Thunder, an homage to the original Dino Zords of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. The new series? Another fucking ninja story.
#1: Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
This is the Alpha (hey now) and Omega of Power Rangers themes. It is the Final Form of Power Rangers songs, cf. how many fuckin’ times they’ve flogged this dead horse in new clothes for the themes of later seasons. Part of it’s that it comes from that halcyon era of television where the theme songs established the premise of whatever you were about to watch. Starting with Rita’s “HAAAAAAA! AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS, I’M FREEEE! IT’S TIME! TO CONQUER! EARTH!” and sliding into Zordon’s “ALPHA! RITA’S ESCAPED! RECRUIT A TEAM OF TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDE!”, you’ve got all you need to know about the next 30 years of Power Rangers. That’s it, man.
You got some ancient evil, and you got teenagers with attitude. Seasonal trappings aside, that 13 second blast captures the series with such elegance it‘s rivalled only by the Magic School Bus (which clocks the basic premise in eight seconds.) Before you even hear the refrain, you got another seven seconds of: kids being zap-teleported into Zordon’s base, transformed into latex supersoldiers, and a flickering peek at that hellacious Megazord. And then oh FUCK that guy’s got a SWORD and she’s got a DAGGER and he’s got an AXE and there’s a BOW and oh I guess that guy’s the dumb nerd, great. And then these giant dinosaur robots and they’re shooting electricity and they stick together and turn into this fuckin’ SAMURAI TANK DUDE. It’s such a precise mash of genre tropes that it becomes a kinda moving heavy metal t-shirt montage.
Which is the other half of the equation, okay, that this is a totally fucking sick heavy metal song. Riffs on riffs on riffs. You’ve got the opening dirge setting the tempo underscored by this kick-snare bash and then it leads into that shrieking melody, beeewww-NEEEWWWW-newwwww-newwww-neww. And now I’m thinking about the Green Ranger’s dagger flute, like, he blew into a dagger and played a melody and summoned a robot dragon out of the sea that could shoot rockets out of its chest. It was a toy and I had it.
Man, this song is just the best. It’s capital-X XTREME from a time when terms like that were used sincerely, and they meant something so spectacular it elevated the human spirit. ‘Go Go Power Rangers’ is seeing Tony Hawk do a 900° spin in person, you know? ‘Go Go Power Rangers’ is going to your friend’s house and riding your Razer scooter down his near vertical driveway and praying you don’t get speed wobbles. ‘Go Go Power Rangers’ is feeling like life is entirely in front of you, a black hole-dense singularity of unexploded potential just waiting for you to blow it up.
And PS: The composer, Ron Wasserman, also co-composed the X-Men: Animated Series theme song. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers set the bar too high for its progeny to clear, but it will always remain perfect in carbonite, waiting to get another shred next time you’re spelunking nostalgia on YouTube.
