When I think of the 90’s, especially in terms of sports, no other team represents that decade
better than the 6 time NBA Finals champions the Chicago Bulls led by Michael Jordan and Scottie
Pippen. In 1984 The Chicago Bulls would draft a rookie named Michael Jordan as the third pick in
the first round. To celebrate Jordan playing for the Bulls, the marketing folks at the team would
enlist announcer and disc jockey Tommy Edwards to come up with an introduction song for the
Chicago Bulls. Edwards was already a bit of a trailblazer for the team starting as early as
1977. Generally the player introductions were kind of an afterthought for a lot of teams,
but in 1977 Edwards came up with the idea to turn off all the lights to announce the starting lineup
for the team in 1977. Before the Chicago bulls began using the Alan Parsons project song Sirius
for their team introductions several other songs were experimented with to introduce michael Jordan
and his team mates including the miami vice theme and michael jackson’s thriller. But it would be a
trip that edwards took to a local movie theater that resulted in the now infamous chicago bulls
intro song. Prior to the movie starting, the theater was playing some music in the background
with Edwards recalling to NBC News in 2019 “I told Mary Lou, ‘I know this song. It’s
Sirius by the Alan Parsons Project,’”. “The more I listened to it, I’m thinking,
‘Wait a minute. This could be the Bulls’ song.’” The following day he would buy Alan Parsons
project sixth album and started practicing announcing hte players name at home with him
adding in the sme interview“And because it has so many great parts to its intro—a new guitar
part or crescendo—it worked great,” “The Bulls loved it immediately. Michael (Jordan) loved it.
That’s been the opening lineup music ever since.” As for the song itself, the instrumental track
named after the brightest star in the sky, would be the album opener for the alan parsons project
sixth record eye in the sky. Parsons would tell Variety about writing thesongtune It actually
started fairly late on in the proceedings of the making of the album. I wanted to open the album
with “Eye in the Sky” but felt it needed an intro — we had become kind of used to
or famous for having instrumental openers…The instrumentals were largely my work. I was just
tinkering around at home with my new computer musical instrument, the Fairlight synthesizer,
back in 1982. I came up with this little riff (hums the intro), literally thinking of it as a
cool instrumental introduction to “Eye in the Sky” — certainly not the Bulls’ theme song!
The riff you hear is a combination of a sample of a clavinet, which Stevie Wonder used to great
effect on “Superstition,” and a set of notes, to which I added a delay. Part of the sound of the
Fairlight sample used in “Sirius” is a delay upon itself. It’s the artificial echo that
goes with it that gives it its character. Parsons himself was not a big basketball
fan & wasn’t aware the chicago bulls were using Sirius until some friends informed him about
its use. Sports arenas and venues in general have blanket licensing agreement with music
publishers and performing rights organizations that allowed them to literally play whatever they
wanted. ​​As a result, the artists don’t really make a lot of money off sporting events playing
their music and thus they don’t need to be asked for their music to be used. Parsons would admit
to variety he was disappointed that the chicago bulls organization never called him to get his
blessing to use the song but was also proud of how it was adopted adding to variety It’s
incredible. I’m so proud that this is the case, especially since a sports theme was the very
last thing on my mind when I wrote it. Although they may not know the identity of the artist,
it is without a doubt the most-played piece of music that I’ve ever recorded.
Soon enough the song started extending to outside of the NBA with weddings, bar mitzvah’s
and even high school teams using the song. The unebelivably amazing documentary the last dance,
which chronicles michael jordan’s career with the bulls did make heavy use of sirius and parsons
would admit that was one of the first times he was paid pretty well for the song being featured
alongside anything having to do with basketball. While he never attended a single chicago bulls
game, Parsons he would admit to Variety that he did meet Michael Jordan once recaling
There was another documentary about Michael in 2000 called “Michael Jordan to the Max,” and they
used an electronic version of “Sirius” by another artist as the theme. There was a launch party for
that movie in Chicago, and I was there. Michael was surrounded by millions of people looking to
shake hands with him and say hi. Our eyes did meet, and I shook his hand and said, “Michael,
you probably don’t know who I am, but I wrote your walk-on music.” And he said, “Oh, nice to
meet you, man” —almost like it hadn’t sunk in. That does it for today’s video guys thanks
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