Taylor Sheridan Had A Few Very Specific Requests For Yellowstone's Theme Song

Whether you're into Taylor Sheridan's numerous Western shows ("Yellowstone," "1883," "1923," etc.) or not, you can't fault them for their overarchingly epic scores. As much as it's been vital to have the great Ennio Morricone compose his iconic scores for Sergio Leone's legendary spaghetti Westerns like the Clint Eastwood-led "A Fistful of Dollars" or the quintessential "Once Upon a Time in The West," it's as important for Sheridan to have the right music to create the milieu he aims for.

Despite giving up on "Yellowstone" early on (I'm more of an "1883" and "Landman" type of guy), I can still easily recall its opening credits because of the stylish design and the haunting theme song that accompanied it. It's an instantly captivating intro if you're a fan of Westerns — grand, eloquent, and mesmerizingly tragic in a way that allows you to get lost in it immediately. It was also the first in line, which made it a fresh and imposing theme before "1883" and "1923" incorporated its tone and delivered different variations on it. Thus, it hardly comes as a surprise — especially from a writer-creator who insists on writing most of his series strictly alone — that Sheridan had a few quite precise ideas he wanted his first TV show's theme song to encapsulate.

Brian Tyler and Breton Vivian (who were the composers on three Sheridan shows, starting with "Yellowstone" and continuing with "1883" and "1923") talked about how the official theme song came together at Deadline's Sound & Screen event back in 2023. Tyler explained that Sheridan was in the middle of writing the debut season of the horse melodrama when he came to him with a few very specific requests of how he wanted the intro to sound. He said:

"He was writing "Yellowstone" and was thinking that he wanted to do [a] very cinematic kind of approach. He wanted orchestral music and he wanted something very emotional that explored the dark side too, that which reflects dynamically against the beauty. It's like where tragedy is beauty and you understand one because of the other. So I got together with him and, you know, he has his cowboy boots on and everything and ... he's amazing. We just started talking about music and ... just understanding the story. And then all of a sudden I found myself writing that first piece from the screenplay. And the "Yellowstone" theme became that."

"Tragedy is beauty" is something that many filmmakers and screenwriters know inherently, yet very few of them can actually make their story feel that way without forcing it down our throats. Even a talent like Sheridan can't get it right all the time, but when he does, you feel the weight of that cinematic magic sweeping through your body with a massive wave of emotions. The music plays a pivotal role in that, and to their credit, Tyler and Vivian understood the responsibility of that assignment and delivered some of the best scores we've heard in modern Westerns in the last ten years or so. Whether it's "Yellowstone" or other installments in the Sheridanverse, the soundtrack is always as vast, potent, and dramatic as it can possibly be.