Friday Night Lights: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Friday Night Lights is the soundtrack for the 2004 film Friday Night Lights, written mainly by the post-rock band Explosions in the Sky in June and August 2004. It also features music by Daniel Lanois, Bad Company, and David Torn.

Explosions in the Sky joined the project after receiving an email from producer Brian Reitzell that said: "he was working on a new movie, and he was wondering if would be interested in doing music for it." The members were familiar with the book on which the movie was based and were raised in its setting of West Texas. Despite having access to "all sorts of rare equipment", the band stuck to its usual songwriting style. The prominent track "Your Hand in Mine" was adapted from the 2003 album The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place.

Of the songs from the film, "Your Hand In Mine," "Inside It All Feels the Same," "The Sky Above, the Field Below," "To West Texas," "A Slow Dance," "From West Texas," "An Ugly Fact of Life," and "Home" have all featured on the subsequent television show.

A double vinyl version of the album was released exclusively through Hip-O Select records and was limited to only 2500 copies.

"Every once in awhile someone asks us how we ended up working on a big studio movie about football. The simplest answer is that we got an email. This particular email was from Brian Reitzell who was the music supervisor for both The Virgin Suicides and Lost In Translation (two movies that we are quite fond of). He said he was working on a new movie and he was wondering if we would be interested in doing music for it. We told him we would. He got back in touch with us a few days later and told us that the movie he was working on was called Friday Night Lights. He didn't really have to explain much as we were somewhat familiar with the book and even more familiar with the setting of the story. West Texas. Midland and Odessa. This is the part of Texas where three out of the four of us grew up. We all read the book and we loved it. It was sad and joyful and depressing and triumphant and funny and ugly and exciting. We said yes. Several months later we found ourselves in a studio in Burbank, staring at a movie screen and trying to write music. Our fears of having weird movie producers and studio executives hovering over us were completely unfounded. It was just us, Brian Reitzell and two friendly Australian engineers (Justin Stanley and Richard Jory). We were surrounded by all sorts of rare equipment (vintage drum machines, rare keyboards and organs, strange percussion devices). We didn't really use any of it. We just stuck with what we knew. There was also a kitchen that was stocked with great quantities of snacks. Chips, cookies, several boxes of Twizzlers, etc. It was delightful. We were in the middle of a tour and in New York City the day in October that the movie opened. We hurried through our soundcheck and literally ran to the closest theater. We got our tickets and sat down and watched the movie. Then we left and ran back to the venue and played our show. "