I’ll tell ya what, I could listen to the full Yellowstone soundtrack for the rest of my life and die a happy man… it’s easily the best soundtrack on television, and even on its own, it’s just a damn good playlist.
Needless to say, Yellowstone music supervisor Andrea von Foerster did one helluva job when it comes to giving recognition to those incredible artists who don’t get the recognition they deserve in the mainstream music industry.
She recently joined the Yellowstone podcast with Jefferson White (Jimmy Hurdstrom) to talk about the music on the show, talking everything from how she got her start, to meeting Taylor Sheridan and bagging the job, what she loves about her job, and what goes into picking out songs for the show.
She specifically chooses red-dirt country and Americana (no surprise there), because it is more relatable to the setting of the show, rather than deep south country (or mainstream country, basically) because it’s too “check-listy and name-checky.”
“Red-dirt country for anyone who doesn’t know, is typically Texas and Oklahoma. Americana and country, and songwriting in general, and there’s such a strong sense of storytelling in both states, and we tend not to use sort of deep south country because it’s a little more name-checky, and sort of party… and we don’t want to name a bunch of cities that are not in where we are.”
She also said that it was pretty easy consulting with Sheridan for the music on Yellowstone, as they both share the same taste for music.
“There was never really a proper conversation, it’s just I knew what he wanted, and my job is sort of reading the minds of everyone I work for, and he’s got great ears and the perfect musical landscape to play on, so it’s been kind of easy finding the right thing.
However, we do have a pretty narrow lane of the kind of music that we use, because we don’t have a lot of celebratory music. Ya know, we have a lot of ‘the world is ending,’ and ‘does anyone care’… There’s a lot of reflective songs, so there’s a lot of, sort of, redemption or regret, things like that.”
She then talks about how red-dirt music fits in perfectly with the depth of the show:
“We do look for people who have backgrounds in rodeo, roping, ya know barrel racing, like I have albums from a lot of barrel racers who’ve reached out to me over the years, and ya know people find me and I’m fine with that because I can’t find everything on my own.
I think the thing that comes with being from the southwest in general, or just the west in general, is space. Having this kind of sort of space and desolation and everything else it sort of matches the landscape we have on the show.”
Bottom line, she’s perfectly been able to match songs with scene, making you almost feel like you’re right there in the show.
But for her, she says the talent is already out there, her and Taylor are just helping people find it:
“We are helping elevate people who already have that amazing talent and Whiskey Myers is obviously the number one artist that wins the day on our show because they had three old records hit the top 10 after appearing on our show… they have been amazing and we continue to use their music.
We’ve used a ton of Blackberry Smoke, getting to use Charley Crockett is amazing, I’d love to use more of his stuff, we’ve used quite a few Lainey Wilson songs, Hailey Whitters… we love bolder vocals when it comes to females.. and the Colter Wall is amazing, nobody on Earth sounds like him.
Shane Smith and the Saints, I’m super excited about using this season… that was another Taylor request. Zach Bryan, and Gethen Jenkins we used a couple times, he’s fantastic. The Panhandlers we got to use this season, and then Ross Shifflett is another one, a totally independent artist that we’ve used multiple times.”
Needless to say, she deserves a ton of credit in making the show great.
If you’re looking for the entire Yellowstone soundtrack, complete through every episode of Season 4, then look no further.
Our Yellowstone: The Soundtrack Playlist, featuring every song from every episode, updated in real time, every Sunday night.
