on the twisters soundtrack
and probably a little too much about glen powell
In case you missed it, Country Radio is back, baby. I’m not talking about Country crossover on Pop stations, I’m not talking about t-shirts that say something about Loretta kicking ass, and I am definitely not talking about MJ Lenderman’s fourth album, Manning Fireworks, out September 6th on ANTI Records. I am talkin’ about Ford truck drivin’, big hat wearin’, Bud Light crushin’, pontoon boat floatin’, Cowboys game hollerin’, Waffle House eatin’, lawn mower ridin’, farmer’s tan sportin’, rattlesnake boot kickin’, Country Radio.
I spent a month of this summer in Texas and it was totally inescapable. While I had caught glimmers of the country takeover in DC with Post Malone’s new songs in convenience store speakers, rotating posters for Luke Combs’ and Nathaniel Rateliff’s concerts at bus stops, and Jelly Roll’s visit to the Hill, it was an absolutely different experience once I was back South for the summer. Every pool I went in had a patio sound system oscillating between new Chris Stapleton and new Shania Twain, the record store was sold out of copies of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, and I even came across a pop-up downtown from the same company where Lainey Wilson buys her iconic hats with a line wrapped around the block. Also, I don’t know if you heard, but George Strait played the biggest U.S. concert ever at A&M’s Kyle Field in June. No really, did you hear about this? No one outside of Texas seems to have heard about it.
But that isn’t the only 90s staple that’s back this summer — Twisters, the long-awaited sequel to Twister, touched down in theaters across the country in July.
I am a pretty biased Twister-head (the original is one of my favorite movies) but suffice to say, this new flick rocks. Twisters’ plot is incredibly similar to that of the original, which is exactly what I wanted — scientific discovery-driven storm chasers are confronted with the unethical, capitalist gains storm chasing can apparently provide and despite mild conflict, ultimately, the authentic dirtbags are triumphant over the money-obsessed yuppies. It has everything: twin tornadoes, a cow tornado, a fire tornado, and a tornado that targets a movie theater. It, of course, also has a stacked cast: Hulu’s Daisy Edgar Jones, who did not convincingly play an Oklahoman endeared me nonetheless and Broadway’s Anthony Ramos who manned one of my favorite fake movie inventions (the Dorothy) were incredibly fun leads. And now I am going to list the other actors before I list the big one: Ryan Murphy’s David Corenswet played the maddest MIT grad I’ve ever seen (sorry Good Will of Good Will Hunting), Jordan Peele’s Brandon Perea somehow outshone his performance in Nope as Boone, the natural successor to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Dustin in the original, and I liked that Frisco’s Sasha Lane was in this because she is not only cool but she went to my rival high school. So it’s like I was basically in the movie.
So now I will talk about the star. This movie is a vehicle for a lot of things: cool storms, even cooler trucks, and the coolest of all: Glen Powell. Now, Glen has had a long career – he played frat king Chad Radwell in Scream Queens, baseball philosopher Finn Finnegan in Everybody Wants Some!!, fake assassin Gary Johnson in Hitman, and then also was someone in Top Gun: Maverick but that’s not my business. Oh, also he was in Set It Up and Anyone But You, my roommate will point out if I don’t mention those.
But no character he has ever played can compare to the charming cowboy-meteorologist, Tyler Owens. He’s a bull rider YouTuber who fills tornadoes with fireworks, but he obviously also has the sensitive side that he is, in fact, scared of tornadoes, duh. He lets Bill Paxton’s son, James Paxton, get vortexed after he was being a douchebag but rescues a lost puppy. He’s from Arkansas. Great stuff. But how does the movie get this complex rugged charm across to the audiences?
Picture this, you’re in a gas station parking lot full of sleek new Ram trucks and tourists awaiting the storms, when suddenly, three dust-covered, mud-kicking rides, all in a line (iconic Twister shot), pull in. A cheering crowd swarms them and Glen Powell, sporting a cowboy hat and sunglasses like he was born to wear this exact costume, jumps out of a lifted truck and into his adoring fans. You would need a perfect song to accompany this, something loud, something that can test the limits of a theater’s sound system like the thunder does. Engineered perfectly for this exact need, Luke Combs delivered “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” a song made to fill a stadium and a theater alike. It has competitive guitars, vague imagery of the wide plains in the movie, and sets the story in the titular state of Oklahoma. It sounds like it has existed for 15 years and I can’t decide if that makes it cool or not. It’s perfect for shotgunning beers and it’s an ideal introduction to the sound of the movie.
The entirety of Twisters is soundtracked by current Country Radio stars, Nashville hitmakers, and naturally Miranda Lambert to tie it all together. This is significantly different from the original which, like most Gen X classics, had a Soul Asylum song somewhere in the movie. The soundtrack was rock-driven with contributions from artists like Van Halen, The Goo Goo Dolls, Stevie & Lindsey, and the Peppers. It had some country influence, k.d. lang and Shania, while also balancing in some singer-songwriter jams from Tori Amos and Lori Loeb. It’s a total unabashed snapshot of 1995 (not 1996), highlighting the guitar-driven radio sounds of the time. However, the genre narrowed for the sequel and Twisters is a total unabashed snapshot of 2023 country (not 2024).
Luke Combs sets the tone of the album with “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma” – a song made almost exclusively for blasting while mudding in a Ford. Yet, from there, the album dips and dives into the different sounds of the moment: Thomas Rhett’s Troubadour guitar, Kane Brown’s windows-down sing-alongs, Bailey Zimmerman’s wordy ballads, and Tanner Adell’s boot-scootin’ dance jams effortlessly weave together, kind of creating the perfect playlist for a country radio DJ that’s running a bit late for their shift.
Country is an incredibly versatile and absorptive genre and while this soundtrack really showcases this, especially by how effectively most of the songs are placed in the movie, there are still some standouts. If I had to pick, my favorite song is probably Tyler Childers’ weird, contemplative, hymn-like contribution, “Song While You’re Away.” It’s comparatively very quiet compared to the bangers that sandwich it, “Tear Us Apart” by Sam Barber and “Already Had It” by Tucker Wetmore.
In the context of the movie, the song basically just plays out of a car stereo while like 4 characters talk over it after a long day of arguing and chasing storms. It’s pretty much “listen-to-the-actual-dialogue-and-you’ll-miss-it.” Which I did, and then on the Metro home, I found it on the official playlist, and slightly had my heart wrenched out between stops. Tyler is a loyal disciple of Sturgill so the song is drenched in a steel guitar, keys, and there’s minimum three guitars playing on top of each other. But mostly, the song tells a story totally unrelated to the plot of the movie. While many other artists relied on storm imagery in their lyrics or references to the Great State of Oklahoma, this really just sounds like a pretty good Tyler song. Instead of being direct, it just lays out the romantic theme of the movie pretty succinctly, starving for something more with someone else. I think it’s really nice especially when underscoring the two romantic leads bickering.
I have a lot of favorites on the album, like Tyler’s song, Tyler Halverson’s Rolling Stones-y Merle song, and Miranda Lamberts’ credit song, “Ain’t in Kansas Anymore” that I desperately want to sing at karaoke. But I can’t stop thinking about the almost peculiar inclusion of the least-stadium artist on the list—Charley Crockett.
Charley had two songs in this movie, to understand the scale, that’s how many Jelly Roll has on here (also how many people named Tyler have on the album) (also how many people named Tanner have on the album). The first song is at the beginning of the movie, “Run Horse Run,” a 2020 single, and I believe the only song in this entire movie that was previously released. I saw him perform this song live at the 9:30 Club the same week this movie came out and he never mentioned its upcoming starring role. And it’s perfect for the movie, sounding like something that would be played during a horse chase sequence in a 1950s cowboy TV show. That’s exactly what it’s used for here – a car chase sequence with a cowboy. The second song is played later in the movie “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky,” another galloping anthem, a song that could have been a theme song for maybe a 70s country revival TV show, like Dallas.
While the rest of the songs on the album sound incredibly current despite perhaps dated references underlying them, Charley Crockett’s songs actually sound old. I can best describe him as someone who sounds like he should be performing in a smoky saloon. And if he can’t have that saloon he should be bringing down the house on The Porter Wagoner Show. When he performs, he wears a cowboy outfit that matches his band’s and wields a heavy bluegrass guitar while harmonizing with a low trumpet. It feels out of time. Not mildly theatrical like Orville, but like a lost time traveler. I love the usage of his incredibly vintage sound in Twisters, it's so reminiscent of Western movies, that it fits perfectly in this neo-Western.
So back to the stadium sound, there’s an immediate drawback to these country songs — and it’s not that some of them totally suck — it's that they’re ultimately too on the nose. They’re working at a disadvantage: pop country usually leads with reliable themes — boots by the front door, a truck on an empty highway, a woman in an empty field or whatever. These are also the natural scenes of a movie like Twisters. There’s a needle drop and then there’s straight narration.
For example, after a particularly tense night, Daisy Edgar Jones’ character finally drives back to her home and her mother for some emotional reflection. The song that plays as the blue highway stretches into the dawn’s horizon is Lainey Wilson’s contribution, “Out of Oklahoma,” which overlays the entire scene. Melancholy chords pluck as Daisy contemplatively looks out the window of a stolen truck and Wilson begins to sing:
I've been dreamin', I've been drivin' / Tryin' to stay between the lines of / Who I am and who I used to be / I've been livin', I've been losin' / Walkin' miles in different shoes and / Findin' out I can't run from me / And if I ever get a little too far / I remember where I left my heart / Can't take the home out of Oklahoma
It’s too literal, it’s precisely narrating what is happening, and ultimately — in my theater full of exactly 7 people — I laughed out loud. Actually, the second verse is even more pointed (reminder: she is finally driving home to her farm after years of avoiding it and a few days of getting back into storm chasing across dilapidated towns in Oklahoma)
The sky is cryin', mama's callin' / Paint is peelin', grass is tall and / I'm still feeling like I don't belong / Water tower, graffiti faded / Am I older or just jaded? / Everything and nothing changed at all
Sorry, I laughed again adding that in. I don’t think it’s a bad song at all, calling a pop-country song a “bad” song is kind of pointless – it’s not like it’s supposed to be really good. But this song is catchy and probably super fun to croon at Lainey Wilson’s new Nashville bar, which is all you really need. It’s ultimately harmless but points to a clear drawback of this hyperspecific album. It’s not the only time this happens. My other favorite is somewhere at the beginning of a movie when Daisy Edgar Jones tricks Glen Powell into chasing a weak storm, Conner Smith and Tucker Wetmore’s “Steal My Thunder” starts blasting. Get it? She literally stole his thunder.
So I’ve talked about the good and mentioned the less-good, so what about what’s missing? If this is a snapshot of the 2023 popular country sound, what’s not here?
Well, there is actually a notable major country singer and his producer (also singer) absolutely excluded from this soundtrack. In fact, a lot of songs on this album sound like they’re his songs but they’re not. This would be because his songs are generic and bad and easily replicable. It’s great that he’s not here. Zach Bryan is also notably not on the soundtrack, I think this is just because this is a 2023 time capsule and he is so obviously a 2024 star. In fact, he might have beat out Luke for the title track if he had released his self-titled album a few months earlier. Other notable missing people are Chris Stapleton and Eric Church, who I just thought would be somewhere here, but I guess they would be competing with Luke for that top spot so, pass. Jason and Sturgill are also notably not in it, probably because they were too busy starring in the other major Oklahoma movie of the past 12 months, Killers of the Flower Moon. And obviously, this is pop country so all of the coolest alt country artists are miles away from this but wouldn’t it have been cool if Indigo de Souza was here?
The final thing missing in this album are the women. Of the 30 songs, only 7 are performed by women, and 2 of those 7 are closer to legacy performers than the rest of the album’s newer artists. It’s irritating and a waste of opportunity, especially given how the whole movie is led by a woman. But after sleeping on this paragraph’s conclusion, I do think it's an accurate reflection of country radio these past few years. While artists like Lainey Wilson and Kelsea Ballerini are sweeping award shows and Dasha’s line dance smash hit, “Austin,” is still charting, I find that comparatively, in general practice, I hear women a lot less in this sphere of country radio hitmakers.
So, I actually just googled that to check that I am not making that experience up (thank you Country Top 40 on iHeart Radio dot com) and I can confirm that right now, out of the entire top 40, only 4 songs by women are on the list. So the ratio in the Twisters soundtrack is actually comparably better. Why women in country are facing this as Dolly Parton only becomes more of a cultural icon and Kacey Musgraves-hysteria was only a short 5 years ago is another essay entirely, but until then, I’ll support Lainey and her big hats.
Back in February I was watching the Grammys and noticed how, more than other years, the camera felt trained on the delegation from Nashville. Instead of cutting back to Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus for reactions, Chris Stapleton’s hat kept popping up on my screen, Lainey Wilson laughing, and Zach Bryan whispering to someone. That night Beyoncé and Kacey Musgraves announced new projects. Jelly Roll got pictures with everyone. Inescapable. It wasn’t just music’s biggest night, it was suddenly Country’s biggest night. It seemed like a true victory lap for the exact year the Twisters album captured. Now I think the Twisters soundtrack is the trophy.
I think about the moment the country is having constantly and how it will be remembered and I can’t help but feel that this movie totally cemented it. I am really glad all this exists and I can’t wait until I am digging in a $5 CD bin 5 years from now and find a copy of this album at the bottom.