How The Alan Parson's Project song 'Sirius' became the theme song for the Chicago Bulls.

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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