What’s the Deal With the ‘Seinfeld’ Soundtrack Finally Being Released?

Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld‘s mega-hit comedy series Seinfeld went off the air in 1998, but the show’s memorable music has never been made available for purchase by itself…until now. More than 20 years after the series finale, the Seinfeld soundtrack is finally about to be released.

WaterTower Music is set to release a 33-track soundtrack album tomorrow, on July 2, 2021, just in time for the Fourth of July holiday. (What better way to celebrate America’s independence than by dancing around to a slap bass track?) The Seinfeld soundtrack will be released on all digital platforms, and to mark the occasion, Variety spoke with Seinfeld composer Jonathan Wolff, who admits that he does not know why a soundtrack was not produced while the show was on the air, like so many other soundtracks are.

“It struggled for the first few seasons,” he shrugs. “We were an accidental hit. We were busy getting episodes out, and nobody was thinking about the music. And that’s OK.”

It might be easy to forget given how pervasive the show’s theme was, but Wolff created a tons of different types of music across ten seasons of the series. According to Variety, the range of musical styles included on the forthcoming soundtrack is “surprisingly broad”:

[There]s hip-hop for “Kramer’s Pimpwalk,” happy whistling and guitars for “Jerry the Mailman,” a “Mission: Impossible” vibe for “Jerry vs. Newman Chase,” suspense-thriller scoring for “Cable Guy vs. Kramer Chase,” ’90s rock for “Kramer’s Boombox,” Eastern mysticism for “Peterman in Burmese Jungle,” and vintage guitar-and-harmonica blues for “Waiting for the Verdict” from the series finale.

There’s also some jazz music that was created for a season 7 episode in which Elaine dates a saxophone player. The pair were going to share a scene at a jazz club, but that was ultimately cut; thankfully, the music still exists, and Wolff is including it now.

Seinfeld’s Unique Theme Song

Sitcom theme songs of the late 1980s and early 1990s largely consisted of jingles or memorable pop tunes – think about “Everywhere You Look” from Full House, or “As Days Go By” from Family Matters. But that wouldn’t work for Seinfeld, which opened and closed with stand-up comedy bits from Jerry. So Wolff created a new song each time, musically accentuating Jerry’s punchlines with musical bass riffs and mouth-pops. I highly recommend listening to this fascinating episode of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast which features an in-depth conversation with Wolff about how he got the gig and the unique challenges he faced when creating music for the show.

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