A single, spare guitar line opens a story about two ranch hands and the love they cannot speak aloud. The man behind that sound is the Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla, and on November 1, 2005, his score for Brokeback Mountain arrived as a soundtrack album on the Verve Forecast label. The album was recorded on February 7, 2005, yet it would carry the film's emotional weight from a Wyoming summer to the stage of the Academy Awards.
Building the sound by hand
Why did this quiet collection of country-folk instrumentals become one of the defining film scores of the 2000s? The answer lies in how Santaolalla built the sound. He played the guitars and harmonium on most of the instrumental tracks himself, with Bob Bernstein adding pedal steel guitar and Gabe Witcher contributing violin parts. The result was a texture so intimate it felt like overhearing a secret.
The result was a texture so intimate it felt like overhearing a secret.
The album was not a conventional Hollywood score. Across its 17 tracks and 43 minutes, Santaolalla mixed his own minimal compositions with songs by other artists. Willie Nelson covered "He Was a Friend of Mine," produced by Larry Campbell, while Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright recorded Roger Miller's "King of the Road." The song list leaned hard into the country tradition the film's characters inhabited. The album also reached beyond the film's country core. Linda Ronstadt sang "It's So Easy," the Buddy Holly and Norman Petty song, and Steve Earle contributed his own "The Devil's Right Hand." Those choices widened the record's emotional range without breaking its dusty, western mood.
A Golden Globe for Emmylou Harris
One song became the album's emotional center. "A Love That Will Never Grow Old" was written by Santaolalla with lyrics by Bernie Taupin and sung by Emmylou Harris. The song won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, while the album itself was nominated for two Golden Globes and a Grammy. The recognition from the music industry was swift, but the biggest prize was still to come.
The Oscar for Best Original Score went to Santaolalla, a striking victory for an album rooted in folk restraint rather than orchestral sweep. The Brokeback Mountain soundtrack sold 300,000 copies worldwide, with 100,000 of those in the United States. Those numbers reflected a hunger for music that could stand apart from the film and still carry its ache. The score's reach extended beyond the original album. A separate CD single for "The Wings" carried three remixes by Gabriel & Dresden, Manny Lehman, Tony Moran and Warren Rigg. In 2006, the Global Stage Orchestra released another soundtrack version on Wonderful Music, repeating the Verve tracklist.
The film itself, released in 2005 with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, was adapted from a short story by Annie Proulx. Santaolalla's score sat between two other projects in his own timeline: after The Motorcycle Diaries and before North Country. His approach had already been praised, but Brokeback Mountain turned that approach into a landmark. The film itself drew on more music than the Verve CD held. Tammy Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," the Allman Brothers' "Melissa," and John Mayer's "Bigger Than My Body" all appeared on screen, along with Rick Garcia's version of "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas" and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio Espagnol." Some tracks on the disc also ran in a different order than in the picture.
Twenty-one years on, the score still works because it never tries to be bigger than the story. Santaolalla trusted silence, a few picked notes, and the voices of seasoned country singers to do the work. The album remains a lesson in how restraint can win the loudest applause. AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek gave the album three and a half stars.