Working from the oral history in The Five Year Mission: The next 25 years, this is a fascinating deep dive that answers the question “How did a recycled cover of a 1998 song written for Rod Stewart, ‘Where My Heart Will Take Me’ aka ‘Faith of the Heart’ become the title music for Enterprise?”
Also, after resisting melodic scoring in all the 90s shows, it turns out this was the music Rick Berman liked?!!
“…I, for one, can tell you that I thought it was a great opening and I’m not alone in that. I don’t think I’m in the majority, but I’m not alone."
And it seems the song does have its own subniche of supporters who share Berman’s view. (But not I.)
I hated it at first.
Then I grew to love it.
The show is about humanity taking it’s first steps into the wider galactic community, and the song is both about a journey but also less refined than other star trek intros, just like Starfleet is a less refined version of what we are used to.
🤷
I hated it until they changed it in season 2 or 3 and then I realized that I hated the new version even more and in retrospect the original wasn’t quite that bad.
The lyrics are generally fitting to the theme of the show. The Rod Stewart performance didn’t work for me then, later or now.
I thought Stewart wrote the song, but the on-show singer was someone else.
It’s not the original recording, but it’s one of those covers that sound so similar that you ask what the point was.
Presumably, the point was lower licensing fees.
Ah, my mistake.
The song was originally written for Stewart as ‘Faith of the Heart’ and for another recording.
It’s worth reading the article for the history. It was another British singer, who was briefly popular but past his peak, who did the recording.