Theme from Mission: Impossible

The theme is written in quintuple meter (with a time signature), which composer Lalo Schifrin jokingly explained as being for mutant people with five legs. The Morse code for M.I. is two dashes followed by two dots ; if a dot is one beat and a dash is one-and-a-half beats, then this gives a bar of five beats, exactly matching the theme's underlying rhythm. It has been suggested that Schifrin consciously used the Morse code as a starting point for his composition, but this cannot be verified. He did write that he used Morse code as a method for obtaining an unusual rhythmic pattern for his theme to the film ''The Concorde... Airport '79''. Schifrin's working title for the song was "Burning Fuse". He compared his writing process to writing a letter: "When you write a letter, you don't have to think what grammar or what syntaxes you're going to use, you just write a letter. And that's the way it came." He estimated that he wrote the main theme in 90 seconds and completed the full arrangement in three minutes. The actor Martin Landau, who played the character Rollin Hand in the show, attended the recording session for the theme song. "Lalo raised his wand to the musicians and I heard 'dun dun, da da, dun dun, da da' for the first time, and it was deafening", Landau recalled. "Lalo interrupted the band and said, 'no, no, it should be like this.' They resumed and before we could say anything, they had recorded it. I was stunned. It was so perfect. I came out humming that tune." ==Reception==

The original single release, on Dot Records, peaked at number 41 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and 19 on the magazine's Adult Contemporary chart in 1967. Also in that year, two years before Leonard Nimoy began playing the role of Paris in Mission Impossible, the theme appeared on the album ''Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space''. (Nimoy did not perform on the song.) ==Awards==

The theme won as the Best Instrumental Theme at the 10th Grammy Awards held on February 29, 1968. Schifrin also won the Grammy for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Show. In 2017, Schifrin's 1967 recording of the Theme from Mission: Impossible was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Schifrin's version, as performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the 39th Grammy Awards held in 1997. The Clayton and Mullen version (see below) was also nominated for the same award in the same edition. ==Track listing==

• 7-inch single "Mission: Impossible" – 2:31 "Jim on the Move" – 3:12 ==Charts==

==Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. version==

In 1996, the theme was remade by U2 members Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. for the soundtrack to the film. The duo recorded two versions of the song, the main theme and another subtitled "Mission Accomplished". The main theme was used during the end credits. Unlike the original, the majority of this version is in common time, with the exception of the intro. The single was released on 3 June 1996 by Mother Records. The accompanying music video was directed by English singer, songwriter, musician and music video director Kevin Godley. Critical reception Larry Flick from Billboard magazine wrote that Clayton and Mullen "cover the film's instantly recognizable theme, effectively funking it up for the '90s with a shuffling jeep beat". He complimented Lalo Schifrin's melody as "suspenseful and compelling as ever" and added, "It'll give fans of the TV show a fun jolt while entertaining a whole new generation." Dave Sholin from the Gavin Report commented, "Those not familiar with this piece of music A) are under five years of age, B) have been living with Theodore Kaczynski for the past 25 years, or C) are not aware of television. This interpretation by half of U2 will be heard by millions of moviegoers expected to see what's been anticipated as the film of the summer. Try cranking this up and driving around the hills of San Francisco! Very cool." Richard Smith from Melody Maker noted that the Mission Impossible theme "has been weirded and danced up with lots of (not desperately imaginative) This tape will self destruct-type samples laid over the top." A reviewer from Music Week gave it a score of four out of five, adding that the song "should be massive". Music Week editor Alan Jones stated, "They have successfully updated it while retaining its more memorable motifs and drafted in mixers including Junior Vasquez, Guru and Goldie to give it a variety of dancefloor flavourings." Jordan Paramor from Smash Hits gave the single three out of five. Chart performance The instrumental became a worldwide hit. In the United States, it peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and received a gold certification, selling 500,000 copies there. It additionally peaked at number one in Finland, Hungary and Iceland, number two in Australia and Ireland, and number seven in the United Kingdom. Track listings CD single 12-inch single Charts Weekly charts Year-end charts Certifications ==Other cover versions and renditions==

Jazz organist Jimmy Smith recorded a cover version for his 1968 album ''Livin' It Up''. One cover version was recorded by French No Wave artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux on her 1979 album, Press Color. In 2010, a fictionalized account of Lalo Schifrin's creation of the Mission: Impossible tune was featured in a Lipton TV commercial aired in a number of countries around the world. Tiësto created a dance remix version of the theme to promote the fourth film in the series Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). In January 2013, violinist and dancer Lindsey Stirling and The Piano Guys, Steven Sharp Nelson (cello) and Jon Schmidt (piano), released their interpretation of the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". The theme was used in a series of commercials for Etsy during the 2023 Christmas season. An arrangement was played during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics during the segment where Tom Cruise retrieves the Olympic Flag from Paris en route to Los Angeles. The 2024 Indian Tamil film The Greatest of All Time by filmmaker Venkat Prabhu had an Indianized cover version of the theme created by music composer Yuvan Shankar Raja when the main character jumps off a skyscraper in Bangkok after accomplishing a crucial mission. Earlier, a short clip from the same scene was played in the Telugu and Hindi versions of the film's trailer. ==References==