Why Only One Seinfeld Episode Has Music With Lyrics

When an influential piece of media like "Seinfeld" becomes canonized as one of the best sitcoms ever made, it can almost be too easy for viewers to forget the many lessons it learned to attain that status. When you watch "Seinfeld" from the very beginning, you'll see a show that has the right elements, but is still trying to find its footing. Each season saw the NBC sitcom gradually become more confident in its comedy, characters, and outlandish plots. By the time "The Contest" aired, it cemented "Seinfeld" as a phenomenon that everyone had to keep up with.

There was a lot of ambition behind the scenes, with series co-creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld attempting to write a show about the chaotic lifestyle of a New York comedian. It became a hit because they were willing to push the envelope of something that had never been done on television before. In that same breath, Jonathan Wolff not only composed the music for all 180 episodes of "Seinfeld," but was also responsible for a theme song that sounded slightly different in every one of them.

"Seinfeld" doesn't have a traditional opening intro per se, as it instead opts to show Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) performing a minute of his stand-up material at the top of the episode instead. The theme music is a variation of catchy finger snaps, lip pops and slap bass that, according to Wolff, would double as a rimshot to accompany Jerry's jokes (via Forbes):

"The frequency range of this bass, in a general way, stayed out of the frequency range of the audio of his voice so as not to compete; And that was my approach to the 'Seinfeld' theme — to create Lego pieces of music that were modularly manipulable. So that for every monologue, I could create a different recording to compliment the timing and length of each."

It's a cool idea that gives "Seinfeld" a unique sound that changes and evolves in little ways over the course of its nine season run. There was only one episode where Wolff added lyrics, which was a decision that started and ended with "The Note."

Viewers who tuned into the season 3 premiere of "Seinfeld" were greeted with a surprise: There were suddenly short lyrics like "easy to beat" and "heeeeeeeeey" accompanying the sound effects. It's a bizarre addition to a simple intro. In a behind the scenes featurette, Wolff talks about how it was Jerry who instigated the idea after hearing some scat music and wanted to give the intro some extra flair. "There were some little horn riffs embodied within the music and I thought, what if I put nonsense lyrics to those," Wolff recounts.

For a show like "Seinfeld," taking a risk is a large part of the show's appeal, especially if everyone's on board. You never know what might come out of it. The show's creative team had a positive reception to the lyrics. Wolff, however, quickly learned that changing it without consulting the top brass wasn't a great idea:

"We tried it. Jerry liked it. Larry liked it. We finished the episode. We did the next couple of episodes using that music. Then the first episode aired. We forgot to ask anybody else. And when other people, network, Castle Rock, heard this on the air and we're surprised by it, it was not a favorable reaction and we went back and fixed the next two episodes."

Oops! I sometimes feel like a square when I'm put in a position to argue in favor of the studio executives, but they're right in this case. While the lyrical music of "The Note" imbued throughout the episode makes it an interesting footnote in the show's history, I can't see the scat-influenced tune being as effective throughout the following seasons. It's overkill on top of the sound effects and feels like something out of a "Seinfeld" parody rather than a natural extension of the show's rhythm.