The song "Miami Vice Theme" was released in September 1984 and was created and performed by Jan Hammer as the theme to the television series Miami Vice. It peaked at the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1986, it won Grammy Awards for "Best Instrumental Composition" and "Best Pop Instrumental Performance." This song, along with Glenn Frey's number-two hit "You Belong to the City," put the Miami Vice soundtrack on the top of the U.S. album chart for eleven weeks in 1985, making it the most successful TV soundtrack of all time until 2006 when Disney Channel's High School Musical beat its record. Jan Hammer in Miami Vice Jan Hammer (born 17 April 1948, in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a composer and musician. ... Miami Vice was a popular television series (five seasons on NBC from 1984-1989) starring Don Johnson (James Sonny Crockett) and Philip Michael Thomas (Ricardo Rico Tubbs) as two Miami police detectives working undercover. ... The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. ... Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (originally called the Gramophone Awards), presented by the Recording Academy (an association of Americans professionally involved in the recorded music industry) for outstanding achievements in the recording industry, is one of four major music awards shows held annually in the United States (the Billboard Music... Glenn Lewis Frey (born November 6, 1948 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and actor, best known as one of the founding members of rock and roll band, the Eagles. ... You Belong to the City is a rock song performed by Glenn Frey, formerly of the Eagles. ... Soundtrack refers to the recorded sound accompanying a visual medium such as a motion picture, television show, or video game. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Disney Channel in other countries, see Disney Channel around the world. ... High School Musical is an American made-for-television musical film, produced and distributed by Disney Channel, and was released on January 20, 2006. ...

The theme exists in several versions:

• The version that aired with the pilot and the following three episodes which only contains the percussion and keyboards, without the guitars. According to Jan Hammer's manager Elliot Sears, this was the result of the sound elements not being mixed together as Hammer intended.
• The synthesized-guitar lead version aired with all later episodes.
• The full radio airplay version, that includes the TV version at the end.
• An extended dance remix, released in 1985 as a 12" single containing two different length versions (in addition to the original version of the theme).

Miami Vice's pilot episode, made as a two-hour TV movie, did not originally have a theme, but the musical sounds and notation that would become the theme were present as background score. When the series got picked up, Hammer created the sixty second version of the theme. The synth-guitar lead was missing in the aired version of the pilot and the first batch of episodes, and this unfinished version of the theme has remained attached to those episodes, even on the DVD video box set released in 2005.

The theme is also nostalgically remembered as the song played during the first few three-point competitions at the NBA All-Star weekend, including the one in 1986 where Larry Bird famously walked into the locker room and told all his competitors they were playing for second place. Larry Joe Bird (born December 7, 1956)is an American former NBA basketball player, widely considered one of the greatest all around players, and perhaps the most clutch. ...

From 1992 until 1997, it was used as the theme music for Westwood One's Radio Free D. C.: The G. Gordon Liddy Show. (From 1992 until 1996, an announcer would introduce the show during the music bed, saying, "From Washington D. C., Radio Free D. C., with G. Gordon Liddy".) G. Gordon Liddy George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930) was the chief operative for President Richard Nixons White House Plumbers unit. ...