Notes About Nothing: Seinfeld and the End of the Sitcom Theme Song

One of history’s most popular sitcoms, Seinfeld is famously the show about nothing, a moniker so integrated into the show that an entire episode was dedicated to the writing of a parody sitcom equally about nothing. This chapter explores the philosophical idea of a sitcom theme “about nothing,” interpreted here as lacking musical phenomena such as a clear tonal direction, formal organizational structure, and the sense of expectation and fulfillment typical in other sitcom themes. It analyzes Seinfeld’s music, establishes a classification system for sitcom themes, and locates Seinfeld’s musical significance within the era of Peak TV. Jonathan Wolff’s music for Seinfeld is drawn from the vocal rhythm and color of Jerry’s opening monologue. Beyond imitation, the music is integrated into Seinfeld’s standup and the narrative of the show, weaving a mutual affect of nothingness. This chapter explores Seinfeld’s music in depth as a mirror image of Seinfeld’s comedic focus on nothing, addressing specific correlations between pitch, rhythm, phrasing, and timbre and their interaction with Jerry’s monologue. Through a corpus study, Seinfeld’s music is framed against other sitcoms which are grouped by songs with lyrics, songs without lyrics, and smaller musical phrases not forming a full traditional song. Lacking a formal structure, the music of Seinfeld lay truly in a category of its own and served to shape recent, more minimalist sitcom themes. To demonstrate the full uniqueness of Seinfeld’s theme, this chapter presents a corpus of 247 sitcom themes gleaned from 3 separate lists of the “Best Sitcoms of All Time”: Rolling Stone, Stacker, and Rotten Tomatoes. The corpus spans from the emergence of television to present day and quantifies the significance and uniqueness of Seinfeld’s music within the history of sitcoms.