Outside of DEVO, co-founder and vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh has carved out a lucrative niche for himself by scoring films and creating music for TV shows. However, it’s his work on the theme for one of the most-aired shows of all time, MTV’s Ridiculousness, that’s been the biggest earner, bringing in about $1 million per year.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Mothersbaugh spoke about the success of the reworked version of DEVO’s “Uncontrollable Urge” in comparison to his other themes and his group’s best-known song, “Whip It.”
“I’ve written so many other songs for films and television shows,” Mothersbaugh said. “I would’ve been shocked [years ago] if you told me this is the one that would become this prime source of income.”
He continued, “MTV stopped playing us but we came to the other side of the circle. It’s a nice ironic twist because this was one of the songs we never even made a music video for. And now it’s maybe the most-played song ever on MTV.”
Mothersbaugh’s wife and manager Anita Greenspan added, “In the beginning of MTV, you saw a lot of DEVO because they were early to make videos, but MTV started questioning the videos DEVO were making. [The videos] were subversive, they didn’t like them and wouldn’t play them anymore. Now ‘Uncontrollable Urge’ is easily the most-played song on MTV, so [DEVO] wins.”
Of course, there was no way Mothersbaugh or anyone else could have anticipated that former skateboarder Rob Dyrdek’s comedy clip show would eventually make up the bulk of MTV’s programming. As reported by The Ringer, the network aired nothing but reruns of Ridiculousness for one 36-hour period in 2020. Since then, MTV has mixed in more episodes of Catfish and RuPaul’s Drag Race, but the schedule for tomorrow, January 17th still features 10.5 hours of Ridiculousness.
While Mothersbaugh’s other TV work hasn’t been quite as good to his bank account, Greenspan told Rolling Stone that his Rugrats theme paid for their home back in the ’90s.
Back in 2023, Mothersbaugh credited the late Paul Reubens for his career pivot. Since first composing the theme for Pee-wee’s Playhouse, he’s gone on to create music for other children’s TV shows like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Beakman’s World, and Santo Bugito. He’s also scored four Wes Anderson films, The Lego Movie, and Thor: Ragnarok.