'Twisters' soundtrack highlights growing similarities between country, Americana
The new movie "Twisters" was announced to the shock and surprise of the film and music marketplaces.
Arguably, a significant reason that the film exists is because Americana and country music are growing in cultural ubiquity and marketing power.
It's 2024, and a 30-year-old disaster epic that earned a half-billion dollars at the box office is the best way to encapsulate the success of performers on the film's epic, 29-song soundtrack, performers like Tyler Childers, Miranda Lambert and Thomas Rhett, plus the potential scope and reach of emerging superstars like Luke Combs, Charley Crockett, Megan Moroney and Lainey Wilson.
"There are many ways that making a Hollywood movie about that can feel exploitative. And it's also supposed to be campy," the film's director, Lee Isaac Cheung, recently noted in The New Yorker. "You can't make a tornado movie and not let it be a little campy. I wasn't sure if I could deliver on that."
He doesn't.
Instead, what arrives is a film that teeters on devolving into disaster exploitation cinema on the same level as 1974's "The Towering Inferno." Tornadoes catch on fire, interrupt rodeos, are overwhelmed by fireworks and nearly rip apart movie theaters filled with small-town populations.
However, the film impressively remains rooted in earnestness and does not "jump the shark."
Like the film's storm-chasing, star-crossed lovers Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Javi (Anthony Ramos) and Tyler (Glen Powell), "Twisters" works best not just as the story of a lifelong tornado tracker lured back to her Oklahoma hometown in an attempt to save it from demolition. It's also a story of how youth and technology have removed context and empathy from life itself, but not from the humanity of those living digitally defined existences.
Americana and country achieve synergy via blockbuster film soundtrack
Dig even deeper and the film's twin achievements are more deeply entrenched in a legacy beyond the movie's 122-minute running time.
The social dichotomy solved by the film also describes how a space emerges where Americana's three decades of growing commercial impact combines with 100 years of country music's lucrative, widespread influence.
Ultimately, nearly three-dozen artists, seemingly haphazardly lumped together on the film's soundtrack, showcase the best of the dynamic creative vortex unifying the genres.
"The opportunity to create an album where all the subgenres within country music could co-exist together was extremely exciting," Ian Cripps, Atlantic Records' senior vice president of A&R, said in an interview with The Tennessean. "The goal was to match sound to picture, and we had great partners with the director Isaac and the Universal Pictures team to dig into each and every scene and come up with creative ideas for what sound and vibe would feel right to the specific scene."
Cripps collaborated with Universal Pictures to oversee the soundtrack's development.
Genres amplify an authentic creative vision
Chung's background is also crucial to how "Twisters" actually benefits Americana and country's synergy.
Chung's superstar directorial moment grew out of his initial art-house acclaim nearly two decades ago that blossomed via the COVID-19 quarantine-era success of "Minari," a multi-Oscar nominated, Sundance Film Festival top prize-winner that chronicled his roots as the son of Korean immigrants being raised in rural Arkansas.
The soundtrack amplifies the authentic, nuanced awareness of the space between art and commerce that Chung occupies as an auteur.
Play Charley Crockett performing "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" next to minivans chasing a tornado and it feels campily tucked into 75 years of "singing cowboy" Western traditions of film and music, but also highlights the inherent appeal of independent-minded Americana in pop culture.
Similarly, hear the growl of Luke Combs' voice and the heavy rock chord progressions of "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma" as the YouTube-beloved tornado chasers roughhouse their way into the "Twisters" plot and it lands, almost instinctually, with an eye roll.
But much like the assault of rock music, the bravado of the character central to those chasers, Glen Powell's Tyler, eventually mellows and grows endearing when introduced to a uniquely balanced environment where, much like the film, life is far more often bucolic than raucous.
Lainey Wilson, Megan Moroney's singer-songwriter work shines
Regarding music framing the characters and the landscape of the film, Rachel Levy, Universal Pictures' executive vice president of film music, says the soundtracking of Daisy Edgar-Jones' Kate in her Oklahoma roots via Lainey Wilson's "Out of Oklahoma" is particularly powerful.
"Each song has to work in the individual scene regardless of who the artist is, but we definitely started with the artists we loved and who we thought tonally would work the best," Levy tells The Tennessean. "I can think of no one more appropriate to represent Daisy's complicated return home than the amazing Lainey Wilson and Luke Combs for Glenn Powell's character. Tonally, both of their songs worked immediately when we cut them in."
Wilson's growth from small-town Louisiana roots to living in a trailer, to achieving No. 1 status multiple times with songs born of homespun wisdom, plus her appearances in season five of the Paramount series "Yellowstone," all crystallize around what had been seen of Jones' performance as Kate in the film.
"Oklahoma" is both real and symbolic in this case.
More than being the Sooner State, it represents being strong, but perhaps never stronger than your morality and values.
Couple "Out of Oklahoma" with a scene where Kate is the protagonist soundtracked by Megan Moroney's "Never Left Me." The guitar-driven ballad feels familiar but also driven by a twinge within the heart of hope and regret. Like so many of Moroney's country radio hits, it's assuredly a love song, but one that bittersweetly rescues heartbreak from the throes of passionate joy.
"This is the first time I have written something specifically for a movie," Moroney says. "I wrote this with my co-writers who I wrote my song 'No Caller ID' with (Connie Harrington, Jessie Jo Dillon and Jessi Alexander) and we came up with the idea to write about my childhood home. It's about how you leave, but when you come back, nothing changes. It's still the place that made you."
'A moment in time in music and film'
The "Twisters"' soundtrack is already highlighting how much broader country's appeal can potentially become.
"Ain't No Love in Oklahoma" has been streamed over 50 million times in two months and achieved the sixth biggest initial week of adds to country radio playlists in 25 years.
Pair this with tracks from, in total, a dozen Americana Music Association, Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association artist or entertainer of the year nominees and winners, including Miranda Lambert, Jelly Roll, Kane Brown, Shania Twain and Tyler Childers. Also, note that other chart-toppers, including Bailey Zimmerman and social media-adored stars of the moment like Tanner Adell and Tucker Wetmore, are included.
"The opportunity to introduce new rising artists alongside massive superstars was very exciting, and everyone's music flows cohesively on the album," says Atlantic Records' Cripps.
"Every song and artist on this project is extremely special and important. Everyone involved really put passion and excitement into this soundtrack and the goal was always to make an important body of work that captures a moment in time in music and film."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 'Twisters' movie soundtrack effectively pairs country music, Americana
