The borrowed songs: the Italian opening themes in Europe

One of the most characteristic and memorable aspects of the Italian dub of foreign animated series in the 80s-90s-2000s, especially Japanese series, are the opening themes. Testimony of the musical trends of their era, these opening songs are part of the Italian pop culture. This peculiarity is present as well in Spain and France, and sometimes the three versions have more in common than creating original opening themes. Occasionally an Italian instrumental track can be found in a Spanish or French song!

The first example I found, and likely the most famous, is the case of the opening theme for the third series of Lupin III. The song, known as “Lupin, l’incorreggibile Lupin”, was recorded in 1986 by Enzo Draghi under the record label Five Record (currently RTI Music) for the television company Fininvest (currently Mediaset). The same instrumental track can be found in the Spanish and French opening song for Captain Tsubasa, known in Spain as Oliver y Benji and in France as Oliver y Tom. You can imagine the bizarre sensation I felt when I heard the Spanish theme for the first time!

Another example is the Italian opening theme for Cat’s Eye, known in Italy as Occhi di Gatto, which shares the instrumental track with the series Hello Sandybell in the French version. Similarly to the theme of Lupin III, the song “Occhi di Gatto” was recorded in 1985 by Cristina D’Avena under the record label Five Record for Fininvest. In this article you can find other examples of opening themes with “borrowed” songs.

So how did this happen?

In the late 1980s Fininvest founded the private broadcasters Telecinco in Spain (1989), La Cinq in France (1986) and Tele 5 in Germany (1988). When the company bought the broadcasting rights of animated series, the songs created for the Italian version were reused in the opening themes of the series in the foreign broadcasters. La Cinq y Tele 5 interrupted their activities in 1992, while Telecinco is nowadays one of Spain’s main generalist channels.

This curious and funny phenomenon shows that in the animated entertainment field Italians and Spanish had a very similar path, and likely some childhood memories in common without knowing! It’s fascinating, isn’t it?