The Big Bang Theory’s Theme Song Lyrics Have One Major Mistake

The theme song to Chuck Lorre’s and Bill Prady’s 2007 sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” was written and performed by Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies. The world at large knows the band best from their 1998 quadruple-platinum-selling record “Stunt” which featured the hit single “It’s All Been Done” and, of course, the ultra-smash “One Week.” If you want to hear a Gen-Xer sharply recite something for two minutes and 48 seconds, simply walk up to them and sing “It’s been…” I 100% assure you, they will respond with “one week since you looked at me. Cocked your head to one side and said I’m angry. Five days since you laughed at me, saying get that together, come back and see me.” Etc. Etc.

Barenaked Ladies’ performance of the “The Big Bang Theory” theme song was characteristically sesquipedalian, speeding through its lyrics as it describes the formation of the universe. Like “The Big Bang Theory” itself, the song is appropriately nerdy, making a rapid litany of mostly-easy-to-understand science and history references. 

As it turns out, however, it’s not nearly nerdy enough. Some hair-splitting nitpickers (read: all of us nerds) can point to a specific scientific error: “Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,” Barenaked Ladies sing, “then nearly 14 billion years ago, expansion started (wait!).” The following passage contains a few problems. “The Earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool. Neanderthals developed tools.” 

Autotrophs, as you may recall from high school biology, are organisms that can convert abiotic materials — like carbon, say, or sunlight — into nutrients. Plants, algae, and bacteria are autotrophs. Autotrophs don’t drool. 

Of course, one can grant Barenaked Ladies some leeway here, as “drool” could have been used in a metaphorical sense. One can use “drool” to describe any type of appetite, not just the type that activates a hominid’s salivary glands. You might have heard the word “drool,” for instance, to describe lust, i.e.: drooling over a celebrity crush. One may not be literally drooling at the sight of, say, Idris Elba. When the “autotrophs began to drool,” then, they might have merely been hungering for the sunlight they require to survive. It’s a cute little personification for algae.

Another error, however, describes the development of tools by neanderthals. Neanderthals, as we all know, are a species of Homo sapiens that lived in Asia about 400,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch. It was shortly after this time that early humans developed clothing and art. Tools, however, were developed far earlier than the Neanderthals. The earliest known paranthropus tools discovered by anthropologists come from about 3.2 to 3.5 million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch. That is, as we likely also all know, the Stone Age. It’s more accurate to say that Australopithecus afarensis or Australopithecus africanus, Stone Age people, developed tools. Neanderthals were already using tools from the jump. 

The lyrics to the “Big Bang Theory” go on to say that “We built a wall! We built the pyramids!” This makes it sound like history happened in that order, which, of course, it didn’t. The Great Wall of China was constructed gradually from about the 7th century BCE, made of fragments connected by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in about 200 BCE. The famous parts weren’t built until the Ming Dynasty over 1500 years later. Construction on the Great Pyramids of Giza, meanwhile, began about 2600 BCE, predating the earliest pieces of the Great Wall by a long shot. 

Barenaked Ladies needed to do a little more research before they started so recklessly songwriting.