How the ‘Twisters’ Soundtrack Become Country Strong

July 19, 2024 E Jazz Reporter

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By today (July 19), when Universal Pictures’ Twisters blows into theaters, more than a dozen songs from the all-country soundtrack will have whirled their way onto radio and streaming services.

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Propelled by first single, Luke Combs’ muscular “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma”— which is already No. 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart after only nine weeks — the soundtrack includes such new songs from such heavyweights at Miranda Lambert, Kane Brown, Lainey Wilson, Shania Twain and Jelly Roll, as well as burgeoning artists like Bailey Zimmerman, BRELAND, Dylan Gossett, Tucker Wetmore and Tanner Adell. Twenty of the soundtrack’s 29 tracks are featured in the movie.

A soundtrack totally devoted to country songs is still a rarity and when they have occurred, they have usually been for country-themed movies, including 1980’s Urban Cowboy, 1992’s Pure Country, 2010’s Crazy Heart or 2011’s Country Strong.

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Twisters, which stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as storm chasers, is a standalone sequel to 1996’s $495 million-grossing Twister, which featured a rock soundtrack. The one artist from that soundtrack who makes a return as a fun Easter egg for fans is Twain, who duets with BRELAND on “Boots Don’t.” “She had a big song [“No One Needs to Know”] from the first soundtrack, and we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if she did one for this one,’” says Mike Knobloch, president of NBCUniversal Music and Publishing.

“We weren’t trying to recreate [the original soundtrack]. In the same way that the movie is different, we treated this initially like its own project,” he continues. “We worked closely with [director] Isaac Chung to conceive a music soundscape for the film that would be organic and authentic to where the story takes place, which is in Oklahoma,” Knobloch says. “We got to do something we don’t typically do, which is not just dabble in country music, but really lean in in an authentic way to work with Nashville writers and country artists. And not just for a song or two, but for the entire film.”

Universal and the filmmakers met with several labels about the soundtrack, but ultimately chose to work with Atlantic’s west coast president Kevin Weaver, who was coming off the tremendous success of the Barbie soundtrack, over a Nashville-based record company, and had worked on such soundtracks and original cast albums as Hamilton and The Greatest Showman.

“We know from past experiences that Kevin and his team, like us, are super-competitive and uncompromising perfectionists,” Knobloch says. “They want to take big swings like we do. It just felt like Atlantic as a partner had the right attitude. Everyone on the core team [at Atlantic] has great Nashville relationships.”

Like many labels based in New York or Los Angeles, Atlantic has been signing more country artists as the genre boom continues and Weaver says the timing was perfect. “I’ve been trying to find a really credible good vehicle to come onboard with to curate a project within the country genre,” he says. “So, this was really appealing and attractive to me. That’s how we started the dialogue about how this might make sense for us together.”

A number of Atlantic’s up-and-coming country artists appear on the soundtrack, in addition to BRELAND — including Sam Barber, Nolan Taylor and Morgan Ramsey.

Before Atlantic solicited any artists, Weaver, Chung, Knobloch and Universal Pictures’ executive vp of film music Rachel Levy met several times with Chung picking around up to 20 scenes for which he wanted original songs. Atlantic then began soliciting selected artists to write specifically for their scene based on the visual and a very detailed brief, which included tempo, tone and thematic suggestions.

“What’s really important to me when doing [soundtracks] is making sure that the music is really a character of the movie, and we’re not just trying to shoehorn songs into something for the purpose of having a soundtrack. We found that that pretty much never works,” Weaver says.

Instead, almost every song was written expressly for the film. One of the few exceptions was BRELAND and Twain’s track. “I already had my song with Shania and was looking for a good opportunity to release it, and it ended up being a good fit for the film,” BRELAND says. “It wasn’t something we were specifically writing for the soundtrack; we were just fortunate that what they were looking for was something we already had.”

BRELAND adds it was a “no-brainer” to get involved in one of the summer’s biggest movies. “I got a taste of what films can do for my career after my appearance in Roadhouse earlier this year, so it was a no-brainer when I heard about Twisters,” he says. “The original movie is a classic, and the trailer for this looked really good, so I was beyond excited when I found out they were interested in one of my songs for the soundtrack.”

One of the first artists to sign on was Wilson. “We started reaching out to artists and their teams in early January, and the momentum was incredible from the get-go,” says Atlantic senior VP of A&R Ian Cripps, who worked alongside Weaver and the label’s executive vp/co-head of pop/rock A&R Brandon Davis and senior vp of A&R and marketing Joe Khoury. Within 24 hours of contacting Wilson’s manager, they showed Wilson the clip the next night following a dinner. “By that weekend, Lainey had written ‘Out of Oklahoma,’ and we instantly fell in love with the track. “

While there were artists whose schedules didn’t allow them to participate, word quickly spread in Nashville once the music team started reaching out. “Everyone seemed to be really interested and we didn’t want to leave anybody out. We had this embarrassment of riches in terms of who was answering our calls,” Knobloch says, as the soundtrack swelled to nearly 30 artists.

With so many songs, “we had to work really responsibly,” when it came to keeping the music budget under control, Knobloch says. Though he declined to name the budget, he adds that “pound for pound, country songs have fewer writers and samples than other genres of music, so maybe your dollars go a little bit further when you’re making this kind of music.”

“We had artists and managers who really leaned into what we were doing,” Weaver says. “One of the other things that was unique about this is [country] artists are not typically getting calls [asking], ‘Do you want to write a song for a $100 million Hollywood blockbuster?’ where pop artists get that call more frequently. This genre hasn’t had this opportunity to this extent in quite some time, if forever. And so, because of that, people really want to be a part of this.”

Combs’ manager says Combs was enthusiastic about taking part. “We wanted to do this because it wasn’t a remake of a classic, but a continuation of the narrative of the film, and we felt the movie was going to be an epic moment to be a part of,” says Chris Kappy. “The team at Atlantic and Universal were very professional and fun to work with, and gave Luke full creative control on the song and trusted him — so that makes it easier to let the artist create.”

Combs song, which his label Sony Music Nashville is working to country radio, is also in the trailer, which helps tie the promotion and the movie together and start what Knobloch calls a “chain reaction” of releases, including Jelly Roll’s song and video, which dropped Thursday (July 18). The marketing campaign of dropping one song a week for the past 10 weeks — plus a song day the week of release –created a long musical runway, as well as fruitful, ongoing social media campaigns. “We have really been activating in every possible way to make as big an impact and as much noise as possible over a longer period of time in the run up to the release of the film than usual,” Knobloch says.

Additionally, with the staggered releases, “more songs have the ability to have their own moment,” Weaver says, “and when they have their own moment, they perform better typically.”

Despite country music’s surging popularity these days, Knobloch stresses the goal was to make a soundtrack that is “broadly accessible,” and appealed way beyond country fans. “There were a lot of times where it didn’t really feel like we were making a country record,” he says. “We were just making great songs with great artists and writers.”