I remember the first time I watched the title sequence to Apple TV’s fiendishly smart spies-gone-to-seed series “Slow Horses” and thought: Wow, that singer really sounds like Mick Jagger. He’s got the sneering, devil-may-care inflections and everything. Soon I realized it was, in fact, Mick Jagger, who wrote and recorded the song “Strange Game” for the series. I felt like Guy Pearce’s character in “L.A. Confidential,” who mistakes the real Lana Turner for a prostitute surgically altered to look like Lana Turner, and gets a drink thrown in his face for his error.
Mick wasn’t around to throw a drink in my face — I would have paid good money for that privilege — but I have since learned my lesson. More and more series are tapping pop stars to sing over opening titles, and the results, as the kids say, are usually banging. The best of these touch on the show at hand, either directly or obliquely, but they would work just as well on the radio, or Spotify, or wherever you listen to your music these days.