The Survivor Theme Song Is Back to Heal an Aching Nation
After years lost at sea, one of the world’s most famous castaways — the full Survivor theme song — has washed up again on CBS’s shores. This week’s episode of Survivor season 45 opened the usual way, with night-vision cameras trained on the tribe that just got back from Tribal Council (in this case, Lulu). But instead of cutting to the next morning, the show burst into an epic, energetic opening-credits sequence showcasing each member of the cast and featuring hypersaturated, high-res imagery of their natural surroundings. And all at once, viewers broke out in song, chanting those lyrics everyone definitely knows: “Oy, lyoll lee lyoll lee, lyah ah, lee ee, lyoll lee lyoll lee, dah rah!”
An opening sequence like this hasn’t been done since season 38, Survivor: Edge of Extinction in 2019. After composer Russ Landau left the series in 2013, the iconic, minute-long track, “Ancient Voices,” has been played inconsistently. Some seasons would only feature the song in certain episodes like a premiere or finale, while others would only play a very short clip of it alongside a title card.
Host Jeff Probst explained why the show did away with it in a Twitter reply from 2019, saying, “The expense just can’t be justified anymore … Main Titles — for the most part — just can’t hold up to the attention span of today’s viewer!”
This is a valid point (especially considering Netflix’s Skip Intro button in 2017), but doing away with “Ancient Voices” was a miscalculation because Survivor fans are no ordinary TV viewers. They have attention spans, so long as they relate to tasks like “searching for clues,” “completing puzzles,” and “watching Survivor.” The fandom is seriously into Survivor history, and the theme is a key part of that history. So ahead of this season’s premiere, Probst announced that the main title would be returning and that “every episode will have one little Easter egg. A little clue for the true super fans.”
It helps that this season has extra-long episodes, so by including the minute-long sequence, they’re not taking away from any key scenes of camp life or interpersonal dynamics. In a statement to Vulture, Jeff Probst himself credits the 90-minute episodes with the return of the titles, saying that the show had just become too jam-packed with good drama in recent years to spare a full minute. We’ll share the full statement below because this is pretty much as important as any Presidential Address:
When Survivor premiered in 2000, the main title was so fresh, explosive and intoxicating that it created a stirring in your belly. You had to see what this new show was all about.
Looking back on it, it’s easier to dissect. I think it was a powerful combination of two things: these raw, captivating images of a group of people who had clearly been abandoned on a remote island, along with that emotional and triumphant score by Russ Landau.
And what’s crazy is it still works today. The title sequence makes you want to watch.
We stopped doing the main title a few years ago only because our episodes were becoming jam packed with great reality and dramatic tribal councils, so there was no time for it.
When CBS asked us to do 90 minute episodes, the main title was the very first thing that went back into the show! We are so happy it’s back in the show, not just for the fans and the players, but for us too!
And to make it even more fun, each week the main title has one easter egg. A single shot that is a clue to that episode. We think fans will get a kick out of it!
I couldn’t find any Easter eggs in the main title this week (sound off in the comments?), but I did notice a big, glaring Easter egg during the premiere itself. And that egg … is Reba.
This year, one of the three tribes’ names is “Reba,” which according to a quick internet search, means “reed” in Fijian. But do you know what “Reba” means in English? It means Reba. As in, Reba McEntire, global country-music sensation. I’ll admit it was pretty funny watching the team slay challenges while Jeff yelled “Go, Reba, go!” like something out of an unaired Billy on the Street segment. They also wear red, which any Reba-head knows is the color of the dress from her second-most famous song, “Fancy.” Just a silly coincidence I guess.
Except that her first most famous song, the theme song to her titular TV series Reba (while we’re on the subject of theme songs), is “I’m a Survivor.” And this is all going down on Survivor! This cannot possibly be a coincidence. It’s not even like I think about Reba that often. Either Jeff or Reba is trying to tell us something. We reached out to Reba for comment and will report back with what we know.