Music

An Ode To The ‘NCIS’ Theme Song And Its Many Turbo YouTube Remixes

They did not have to go this hard.

Best NCIS Theme remixes

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NCIS is currently in its seventeenth season, despite there being no evidence that anyone has once tuned in on purpose. No one ‘watches’ NCIS (except Trump voters, apparently); it simply happens in front of you, reaching out from the TV, the Videodrome of crime procedurals.

The show’s theme song, however, does not simply happen. An intense psy-trance trackwritten by Numeriklab (who seem to have done nothing else), the ‘NCIS Theme’ pulsates with way too much energy for this show.

The theme is better suited to a cybergoth day-rave under a bridge than the opening to a show about internal US Navy crime investigations. Thankfully, the conceptual approach behind the two-disc approach of NCIS: The Official TV Soundtrack (Volume One) provides context.

While Disc 1, called ‘Special Agent’, offers songs from Oasis, Bob Dylan and Dashboard Confessional, Disc 2, ‘Abby’s Lab’, is inspired by Pauly Perrette’s goth forensic character. The theme, then, is something Abby would listen to. Abby was the differing element between the show and the thousands of its kind, including JAG, which is where it spun off from — so it makes sense they signpost that right from the start of the show.

Abby is now gone, as Perrette said goodbye to the show in 2018 after suggesting a series of ‘physical assaults’ led her to leave. But NCIS continues.

So in ode to Perrette’s character, put on your best baggy chained pants and listen to the best NCIS remixes while drinking a slurpee and thinking about how NCIS was originally called ‘Navy NCIS’, aka ‘Navy Naval Criminal Investigative Service’.


#1. The Official Remix

Metal band Ministry re-upped the theme song for the ‘Abby’s Lab’ disc of the official soundtrack, flecking it out with heavy guitar riffs. Halfway through, some industrial clangs come in underneath, and the BPM is kicked right up.

We would imagine Abby would listen to this song while waking up and putting her hair into side ponytails, possibly gnawing on the bones of a racoon.


#2. The One Where NCIS Goes To Berlin

There are so many fan-made remixes of the ‘NCIS theme’ on YouTube. This one is by ‘ReVeRsE’, which is very cool. In it, they slow things down a little and let the airiness of the song’s outro play out a bit, centring the piano for a searching break between the build-ups.

One commenter calls it “very Russian”, and we get it. Sure, there’s a Euro-trance element here, sure, but this remix sounds most Russian through its coldness and irreparable sense of yearning.


#3. Is It Working For You? I Don’t Think It’s Work-Oh! Ohhhhhh

If ‘NCIS Theme remixes’ could win a Nobel prize, there would be an uproar if ‘Theme Bootleg RainDropz! meets HardfuiZ Booty edit’ didn’t take the medal. This hardstyle remix is like the NCIS team: unwavering and relentless in their cause to make the world a better place.


#4. The ‘Dubstep’ Take

YouTuber MODIFICA7E uploaded this dubstep-lite remake in 2012, writing that they “tried giving the song a completely different feel, even though the melodies are pretty much the same as in the original”. The end result should have been used in The Beach instead of Moby’s ‘Porcelain’.


Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and is available to DJ your next event, provided that event be NCIS-themed. He is on Twitter.