‘Yellowstone’ Used a Song From a Completely Different Movie and I Sobbed?!

Yellowstone is that show your parents probably told you is good, but you ignored it until suddenly there are five seasons and it is somehow the number one show on television despite the fact that you don’t know anyone else who watches it. Well, now you have me. Someone who is watching the series and is so obsessed with it that I would like someone to talk to. At least I have the Mary Sue readers to share my thoughts with.

The series follows the Dutton family and their ranch, which is taking up a lot of land in Montana, and the majority of the show is centered around how people want the land but the family doesn’t want to give it up. And that results in a lot of drama, deaths, and Wes Bentley as Jamie Dutton, who is essentially the equivalent of a Ward Meachum or a Kendall Roy, but if they grew up on a ranch. Point is: I love him.

Created by Taylor Sheridan (who brought his Hell or High Water friend Gil Birmingham to the show), the series has an all-star cast and connections to a lot of other popular media—but there is one particular moment that I am going to think about for a long time. And it does have me wishing that Jeff Bridges would show up on Yellowstone at some point.

I’ve been slowly making my way through Yellowstone and have now gotten to season 3, and there was a song featured in the show—thanks to Ryan Bingham’s inclusion in the hit series—that had me gasping and crying during my watch. Bingham played Walker in the series, and in the season 2 finale, as John Dutton (Kevin Costner) is crying we start to hear the chords of Bingham’s song “The Weary Kind,” which he wrote with T-Bone Burnett for one of my favorite movies of all time, Crazy Heart.

This ain’t no place for the weary kind

Crazy Heart stars Bridges as former country star Bad Blake, and the movie gave us some incredible performances (including Bridges’, which won him the Best Actor Oscar). But it also gave us original songs for the country stars in the movie to sing. So in addition to Bridges, we also got Colin Farrell as a country star. My point is: Movie slaps.

But “The Weary Kind” in particular holds an incredibly special place in my heart. To get personal here, Crazy Heart and Bad Blake reminded me a lot of my dad (in part because my dad looked like Jeff Bridges), and when this movie came out, it was a lot for me to watch. I made my dad watch it as well. Now, after my dad’s passing, thinking about Jeff Bridges and his work is a bit hard because I instantly think about my father.

So, while watching a show about cowboys that features one of my dad’s favorite actors (Costner), I was shocked to hear the song that I would listen to on repeat back in 2010:

Why it works in Yellowstone

There’s a strange subset of western that is all about cowboys and their repressed emotions, and that’s sort of my sweet spot in this world. I love when cowboys are sad about things. It’s why Hell or High Water is one of my favorite movies. Sheridan has brought that same feeling into Yellowstone with characters like Luke Grimes’ Kayce and Bentley’s Jamie, but most importantly, in how John Dutton functions as a character. His entire life is that ranch, but he’s slowly fading away and becoming someone they no longer need.

“The Weary Kind” is featured at a point in the series where John’s actions nearly got his grandson Tate killed, and he is finally sobbing on his front porch. He doesn’t even care that his daughter Beth (Kelly Reilly) is standing in front of him. He’s emotional and he’s breaking down, and that’s where I find Yellowstone to be the most interesting.

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For someone like me, hearing “The Weary Kind” in another piece of media was shocking, but god, I love it.

(featured image: Paramount)