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Music from the Coen brothers' films

Ma. Cristina Alemán, editora en jefe (@mcristina)

It was recently announced that Joel and Ethan Coen will head up the jury at the 68th Cannes Film Festival this year. In their official statement, the brothers express their excitement: “[p]residing over the Jury is a special honor, since we have never heretofore been president of anything.” But their modesty doesn’t stop them from being ranked among the most well-loved directors among cinephiles worldwide.

Their films are recognized (paradoxically) for their differences from one another: from physical comedies like Arizona Baby (1987), to dark westerns like No Country for Old Men (2007), the Coen brothers rarely repeat a cinematographic genre. But, regardless of the type of film, or the era in which it is set, music invariably plays a very important role in the creative world of the two directors.

To celebrate the Coen brother’s presidency, I’m listing five songs that have become synonymous with their filmography:

The folk song “500 miles”, sung by Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – The sweetness of their voices in the moody New York bar awakens the hippy in all of us:

“Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane, in A Serious Man (2009) – This partly joyful, party psychedelic song establishes the tone of the entire film, where uncertainty reigns:

“Man of Constant Sorry”, by Soggy Bottom Boys in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) – Dancing along to the rhythm of a country guitar, accompanied by George Clooney... priceless.

“Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In”), by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition in The Big Lebowski (1998) – Without a doubt one of the best dream/hallucination sequences to take place in a bowling alley in cinema history:

The folk song “Way Out There” in Raising Arizona (1987) – What better soundtrack to the story of a pair of adorable child-nappers, than a yodeling song?

These are just five examples of songs that were already popular, but that were made bigger still thanks to the Coen Brothers’ films. There are many more, and everyone has their favorite, which is why I couldn’t resist the temptation to talk about the same film twice. What better way to finish off this short soundtrack than with “Hotel California”, sung by The Gipsy Kings in The Big Lebowski? How else to present a character like ‘The Jesus’?