Soundtrack Country Song
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A country or roots track featured on a film or TV soundtrack — the twangy single or old-timey number that grounds a story in rural America, the working class or the frontier. The sound spans honky-tonk, bluegrass, outlaw country and Americana: acoustic and steel guitar, fiddle, banjo, plainspoken storytelling vocals and close harmonies. The mood runs from lonesome and elegiac to rowdy and defiant, and craft markers include the roots-revival period soundtrack, the working-life anthem, and the character-driven ballad. It lends films authenticity, place and heart.
History
Country crossed into film with vehicles like Nashville and star pictures (Willie Nelson's Honeysuckle Rose, Dolly Parton's 9 to 5), and the roots-music soundtrack reached a cultural peak with the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), whose Grammy-winning bluegrass revived interest in old-time music. Films used commissioned singles (LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live") and character ballads (the Oscar-winning "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart) to anchor rural and outlaw stories. Curated by supervisors mining Americana catalogs, the soundtrack country song gives cinema a sense of place, class and tradition.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Man of Constant Sorrow(2000) — The Soggy Bottom BoysSpotifyYouTube
- 9 to 5(1980) — Dolly PartonSpotifyYouTube
- On the Road Again(1980) — Willie NelsonSpotifyYouTube
- The Weary Kind(2009) — Ryan BinghamSpotifyYouTube
- Down to the River to Pray(2000) — Alison KraussSpotifyYouTube
- How Do I Live(1997) — LeAnn RimesSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Jeff Smith, The Sounds of Commerce (1998)
- Charles Wolfe and others on O Brother roots revival
- Billboard Country chart archives