A closer look
Composer Jonathan Wolff uniquely recorded the iconic slap-bass theme song for the hit nineties sitcom Seinfeld from scratch for every single one of its 180 episodes. Because comedian Jerry Seinfeld's opening stand-up routines varied in timing and delivery each week, Wolff had to match the popping bass lines and mouth noises specifically to the cadence of the jokes to ensure the music never stepped on a punchline. This meant spending hours every week in a studio manually triggering synthesizer samples to perfectly complement a guy making observational jokes about airplane peanuts and dry cleaning. It is a staggering amount of musical dedication for a show about absolutely nothing, proving that you can squeeze an absurd amount of billable hours out of a network if you convince them your quirky mouth-pop sounds require bespoke weekly tailoring
