20 Things You Didn't Know About O Brother, Where Art Thou?
1. It Sold As Many Albums As Movie Tickets
While the use of the traditional musical sounds of the 1930s Mississippi Delta were always built into the core of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, few could have predicted quite the phenomenal level of response that there would be to that music. In fact, it could well be said that the movie's biggest success and most enduring legacy is less about what was on screen and more about what was on the soundtrack.
The soundtrack album, curated by T-Bone Burnett and featuring the various artists whose performances also made up the Down From The Mountain film, won the Grammy for Album Of The Year. In over sixty years that award has only ever been given to two other movie soundtracks: Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard.
Almost single-handedly revitalising an interest in bluegrass and traditional folk and country music, it also sold incredibly well, so much so that it is possible that more people in the US bought the soundtrack album than actually bought tickets to see the movie!
Reaching Number 1 on the Billboard 200 (the movie peaked at Number 9 at the US box office), the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack has gone eight times platinum in America alone. That means well over 8 million album sales. Meanwhile, even as the Coens' then-biggest earner, the movie's $45 million domestic gross only just puts it at around 8 million tickets sold (at 2000 prices).
Few movies can claim to have had the same musical impact.