The acclaimed singer-songwriter Gillian Welch will get the chance to shine on an international stage at the Academy Awards on Sunday night. She is nominated for Best Original Song, alongside her musical partner David Rawlings, for the tune "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" from the The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, featured in the Netflix original film written and directed by the Coen Brothers.
The song is a mournful ballad sung in the film by Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson. The duet appears in the opening chapter of the anthology film, a rootsy and nostalgic tune that follows a deadly duel between two singing cowboys who cross paths in an old-timey Western saloon.
Welch and Rawlings's song is a fitting addition to the musical segment in the film, as they came to fame in an Americana boom in the late '90s and early aughts—a genre that became a catchall term for country-leaning music that deviated from the polished pop-country that appeared on mainstream radio. Welch recorded five solo albums between 1996 and 2011, including the Grammy-nominated Time (The Revelator) produced and co-written with Rawlings; her musical trademark was dark and lyrical ballads that combined elements of bluegrass and Appalachian folk music, often with violent themes.
It's not the first time the pair has worked with the Coens, whose 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?—a Depression-era retelling of Homer's Odyssey—featured on its soundtrack the very kind of bluegrass, gospel, and folk music that has been central to Welch's musical catalog. Welch appeared on two tracks: "I'll Fly Away," a duet with Alison Krauss, and "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby," a song that appeared in a musical sequence in the film when a trio of sirens (voiced by Welch, Krauss, and Emmylou Harris) seduces the three escaped bandits played by George Clooney, Tim Roth, and Tim Blake Nelson.
The O Brother soundtrack went on to win Album of the Year at the 2002 Grammy Awards—the same year Welch's Time (The Revelator) also earned a nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. The success of the soundtrack resulted in a concert tour; the Nashville stop was captured on film for the 2000 documentary, Down from the Mountain, in which Welch and Rawlings performed the Time (The Revelator) song "I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll."
While the Buster Scruggs song may not beat the other big original duet at this year's Oscars, one has to admit a pair of yodeling cowboys are worthy competitors for Lady Gaga's full-throated belting in "Shallow." "The more peculiar restraints you put upon a song, the more fun it is, so this was kind of a dream assignment,” Welch told Variety in November about crafting the song. “And they didn’t tell us to do this, but if you’re writing a gunfight song between two singing cowboys, who wouldn’t love the opportunity to put some yodeling in?"
