O Brother, Where Art Thou? – Music From the Motion Picture (2000)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (released in Europe as O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Music from the Motion Picture) is the soundtrack album of music from the 2000 American film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The film was written, directed and produced by the Coen Brothers and stars George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Goodman, and included original cast members' singing voices. Among other honors, it won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 44th Grammy Awards on February 27, 2002.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is set in Mississippi during the Great Depression in the United States. The soundtrack, produced by T-Bone Burnett, includes a variety of bluegrass music, country music, gospel music, blues, and Southern American folk music with a sound contemporaneous to the time period. With the exception of a few vintage tracks (such as Harry McClintock's 1928 single "Big Rock Candy Mountain"), most tracks are modern recordings.

The soundtrack was reissued on August 23, 2011, with 14 new tracks that were not included in the original album, "including 12 previously unreleased cuts from music producer T-Bone Burnett's O Brother sessions."

Development and sound

The soundtrack was conceived as a major component of the film, not merely as a background or support. For this reason it was decided to record the soundtrack before filming. T-Bone Burnett and Alan Larman were invited to design collections of music.

Dirges and other macabre songs recurring in Appalachian music, such as "O Death", "Lonesome Valley", "Angel Band", and "I Am Weary", appear in the film as a contrast to the bright, cheerful songs like "Keep On the Sunnyside" and "In the Highways". Ralph Stanley of The Stanley Brothers personally recorded the a cappella folk song "O Death".

"I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" has five variations: two are used in the film, one in the music video, and two in the album. Two of the variations feature the verses being sung back-to-back, and the other three variations feature additional music between each verse. The voices of the Soggy Bottom Boys were provided by Dan Tyminski (lead vocal on "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow"), Nashville songwriter Harley Allen, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band's Pat Enright.

Reception and legacy

O Brother, Where Art Thou? won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002, the Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals (for singer Dan Tyminski, whose voice overdubbed George Clooney's in the film on "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow", Nashville songwriter Harley Allen, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band's Pat Enright), and the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for "O, Death" by Ralph Stanley. It is one of only three movie soundtracks to have ever won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

The album won the Album of the Year Award (only the second soundtrack to ever do so) and Single of the Year Award for "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" at the Country Music Association Awards. It also won the Album of the Year Award at the 37th Academy of Country Music Awards and took home 2 International Bluegrass Music Awards: Album of the Year and Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year (for Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch on "I'll Fly Away").

In 2006, the album ranked No. 38 on CMT's 40 Greatest Albums in Country Music. In 2009, Rhapsody ranked it No. 8 on the "Country's Best Albums of the Decade" list. Engine 145 Country Music Blog ranked it No. 5 on the "Country's Best Albums of the Decade" list. In 2010, All Songs Considered, a program on NPR, included the soundtrack album on their list of "The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings".

Some of the artists on the soundtrack album played a concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, which was recorded in the 2000 documentary film, Down from the Mountain.

On August 23, 2011, a 10th anniversary edition was released featuring a bonus disc with 14 new tracks that were not included in the original album, all but two of which were previously unreleased songs from Burnett's original sessions.

Commercial performance

The album charted at No. 1 on Billboard 200 in 2001 and spent over 20 weeks on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart. The soundtrack CD became a best seller; it was first certified Gold by the RIAA on February 9, 2001, and reached 8 times Platinum by October 10, 2007. It has sold 8,175,800 copies in the United States as of October 2019.