Twisters hype has been inescapable for weeks now. We’ve seen countless footage of Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Glen Powell and his fancy little canine Brisket. Glen Powell and a beaming Tom Cruise. Glen Powell and a few tornados. Nevertheless, one shock awaits when you’re really in your seat: the face-meltingly good Twisters soundtrack.
Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung and set in Southern Oklahoma, wears its large, honking summer season blockbuster credentials with pleasure: it’s about folks attempting to tame tornados, one among which can or might not be on hearth. And, appropriately sufficient, it has a giant, honking soundtrack to associate with it. Authentic songs by modern-nation heavy-hitters like Jelly Roll, Luke Combs, Leon Bridges, Miranda Lambert, and Lainey Wilson present the final touch that helps Twisters nail that ‘90s Golden Age of Blockbusters really feel.
Per American Songwriter, it’s “the primary blockbuster movie to have a totally unique nation soundtrack since City Cowboy in 1980.” Certainly one of my favorites is likely one of the quieter and extra shocking cuts: a ragtag cowl of Richard & Linda Thompson’s “Wall of Demise” by Wilderado, Ken Pomeroy, and James McAlister in a motel car parking zone. (One other enjoyable Twisters musical connection: TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe joins the journey as a scene-stealing storm chaser.)
Billboard experiences that Common labored straight with Atlantic Information to make this occur. After Chung chosen plenty of scenes for which he needed music, the label “started soliciting chosen artists to jot down particularly for his or her scene primarily based on the visible and a really detailed temporary, which included tempo, tone, and thematic solutions.” A minimum of one, if no more, of which undoubtedly included the phrases, “Now image Glen Powell driving a really large truck.”
Twisters is, after all, a sequel of the 1996 movie Tornado. Whilst you may very well be forgiven for less than remembering the CGI cow, it additionally had a fairly sick, distinctly of-its-time soundtrack: Alison Krauss, Steve Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, and the Crimson Sizzling Chili Peppers all seem. Shania Twain, in the meantime, graces each the 1996 and the 2024 soundtracks.
The Twisters soundtrack is a throwback in one other approach. Within the 90s, film soundtracks had been both cultural touchstones in a curated approach (Pulp Fiction) or a possibility for artists to particularly make and showcase new music (Judgment Night time). In our period the place the music algorithm guidelines all, it’s satisfyingly retro to have a film soundtrack you understand you wish to play time and again.
