Music

Music is an essential element in Cowboy Bebop. All music in Cowboy Bebop was composed by Yoko Kanno with The Seatbelts, with the vast majority released on albums.

Styles

The range of styles of the music is very diverse and ranges from straightforward big band jazz, blues, acoustic ballads, hard rock, country, funk, electronic, hip-hop and experimental compositions/elements. Most of the songs are instrumental and play as background music within the show, with some numbers being accompanied by singers ranging in languages such as Japanese, English, and French.

The band also created short compositions called vitamins to enter and exit commercial breaks.

Use in the show

The music often inspired the visual scene and vice-versa, and is the result of significant collaboration between Kanno and Shinichiro Watanabe. For example, fight scenes were accompanied by high-tempo jazz to accentuate the fast-paced action.

Discography

Studio recordings

1. Cowboy Bebop (1998)
2. Cowboy Bebop Vitaminless (1998)
3. Cowboy Bebop No Disc (1998)
4. Cowboy Bebop Blue (1999)
5. Ask DNA (2001)
6. Future Blues (2001)
7. Cowboy Bebop Tank! THE! BEST! (2004)
8. COWBOY BEBOP (Soundtrack from the Netflix Series) (2021)

Live recordings

1. Future Blues DVD

Miscellaneous

1. Cowboy Bebop Remixes: Music for Freelance (1999)
2. Cowgirl Ed (2001)
3. Cowboy Bebop Boxed Set (2002)