‘YELLOWSTONE’ FEVER
EARLIER THIS YEAR, some of country music’s most gifted songwriters, from Miranda Lambert and Aaron Raitiere to Sunny Sweeney and Jonathan Terrell, assembled on Nashville’s Music Row to write songs for country and roots music’s unexpected starmaker: Yellowstone.
Despite being slated to end its five-season run in November (and reportedly be replaced by a spinoff with Matthew McConaughey), the Paramount series about a ranching family and the bloody drama that follows it has given country music a case of Western fever. Record labels are championing artists with rough-hewn aesthetics like Jackson Dean, Sterling Drake, and even one of Yellowstone’s own cast, Luke Grimes. Festivals like Nevada’s Backcountry and Montana’s Under the Big Sky are on working ranches. And artists lucky enough to catch the ear of Yellowstone’s music supervisor, Andrea von Foerster, see their profiles rise as soon as their episode airs.
“It really has legitimized me,” says Dani Rose, who’s had four songs on the series. “Yellowstone bumped up my monthly streaming listeners to [nearly] 100,000, which was crazy, going from nothing to being put on playlists, just based off of the fact that I had music on the show.”
Some artists have crossed over to the show itself. Lainey Wilson, Nashville’s new star, with hits like “Watermelon Moonshine” — heard on the series — played a singer, and brought along her band members (who’ve since been asked to sign autographs).
Rose says the appeal of Yellowstone’s music is its honest origins. Like life on the Dutton Ranch, daily existence can be dark — if, hopefully, less violent. “On the show, there’s a ton of shit that is so horrifying,” she says. “And yet, some of us writers, our life isn’t a movie, but we’ve experienced true pain. And that’s what we’re able to write about.”