Seinfeld, a show about nothing, now officially has the slap bass-fueled soundtrack its fans have always desired. Variety reported Thursday that the legendary sitcom would get an official soundtrack, 23 years after it left primetime for an endless loop of syndication and streaming binges.
The show’s popularity in the two decades since its last episode has only grown as new generations experienced its eccentricities. Which perhaps is why more Seinfeld content like this has emerged in recent years. And, quite frankly, no one seems to know why it’s taken so long for the show to get an official soundtrack anyway.
“It was 30 years in the making,” says “Seinfeld” composer Jonathan Wolff, with a laugh, about the new release. He confesses he doesn’t know why there wasn’t a “Seinfeld” soundtrack while the series was on NBC between 1989 and 1998.
“It struggled for the first few seasons,” he points out. “We were an accidental hit. We were busy getting episodes out, and nobody was thinking about the music. And that’s OK.” The series was among TV’s most popular shows for its last five seasons.
The good news for longtime fans of the Jerry Seinfeld vehicle is that all your favorites are there. The mouth popping, slap bass and synthesizer that would highlight the show’s transitions and credit sequences are at full power on the Jonathan Wolff-led official TV soundtrack. And with 180 episodes to pluck songs from, there’s a surprising range to the offerings and even some never-aired stuff in the mix.
The range of styles is surprisingly broad: 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.
A highlight turns out to be music that was intended for, but never heard in, the show. When Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) dates a saxophone player in a seventh-season episode, the original script called for several scenes in a jazz club where he was playing.
And, indeed, the show’s theme song and other tracks did hit Spotify and elsewhere on Friday. So if you need your fill of mouth-popping sounds on this July 4 holiday weekend, boy is it going to be lots of fun for 32 tracks or so.
[via Variety]