Happy Friday, beloved readers! In today’s edition of news-I-never-thought-id-write, the Super Mario Bros. Theme has just been added to the Library of Congress. Let me explain.
The National Recording Registry forms part of the Library of Congress. It is essentially a collection of songs and scores considered to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Everything that forms part of this collection has been selected by experts and historians to be stored and preserved so that future generations can listen to what’s considered the most important music of our time.
Now, in the month of April in the year 2023, The National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress added its first ever piece of video game music to the collection, and that is Koji Kondo’s The Super Mario Bros. Theme, also known as Ground Theme.
The Registry explain the selection as:
Perhaps the most recognisable video game theme in history, Koji Kondo’s main motif for the 1985 Nintendo classic, “Super Mario Bros.,” helped establish the game’s legendary status and proved that the five-channel Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sound chip was capable of vast musical complexity and creativity. The game’s main theme, or “Ground Theme,” is a jaunty, Latin-influenced melody that provides the perfect accompaniment to Mario and Luigi’s side-scrolling hijinks. Kondo’s score laid the groundwork for an entire generation of chiptune musicians and has been performed by orchestras around the globe, befitting its status as one of the most beloved musical compositions of the last 40 years.
The Super Mario Bros. Theme is now proudly preserved alongside other iconic songs such as Madonna’s Like a Virgin and Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. What a time to be alive.