In 2001, at the peak of boy bands, nu metal and auto-tuned pop, a soundtrack of Depression-era folk, bluegrass, country and gospel climbed to number one on the Billboard 200 and won Album of the Year at both the Grammys and the CMA Awards. This deep dive unpacks how producers T Bone Burnett and Allan Lerman inverted the normal Hollywood process, conceiving and recording the entire O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack before a single frame of the Coen Brothers film was shot, so that the music became the blueprint for the movie rather than an afterthought.

We examine the emotional whiplash of the track list, from macabre dirges like O Death and Lonesome Valley to bright songs like Keep on the Sunny Side, and why that pendulum reflects how people coped during the Great Depression. The episode explores the fictional Soggy Bottom Boys, with Geo ...