“Fire in the Blood / Snake Song” is a ghost-lit Appalachian prayer—where Emmylou Harris’ clear, human voice slips between danger and devotion, as if mercy and menace are sharing the same breath.
This track isn’t a standard “Emmylou song” in the way “Boulder to Birmingham” or “Blue Kentucky Girl” feels authored by her life. It’s something stranger and, in its own way, more haunting: a collaborative piece from Lawless (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), credited to Nick Cave & Warren Ellis and their bluegrass-rooted ensemble The Bootleggers, featuring Emmylou Harris and bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley. The soundtrack was released in late August 2012 through Sony Masterworks/Sony Classical (sources list August 28, 2012 for the album release).
In “ranking at release” terms, this particular track was not a radio single with its own Hot 100 debut. The more accurate chart footprint belongs to the soundtrack album: Lawless entered Billboard’s Soundtracks chart in September 2012, debuting at No. 21 and later peaking at No. 13.
What makes “Fire in the Blood / Snake Song” so compelling is that it’s literally a joining of worlds. The “Fire in the Blood” portion is credited to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, while “Snake Song” is credited to Townes Van Zandt—a songwriter revered for turning tenderness into something perilously sharp. That split credit tells you how to listen: one half is cinematic, purpose-built for the film’s Prohibition-era violence and fever; the other half is folk wisdom with fangs, carried in from outside the movie like an old warning someone once whispered on a porch.
The soundtrack’s larger backstory adds weight to every note. Nick Cave didn’t merely compose; he also wrote the film’s screenplay, and he and Warren Ellis built The Bootleggers—a “fictional band” with collaborators including Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley, and others—to create period-rooted music that feels lived-in rather than “scored.” That matters because the track doesn’t feel like a modern artist visiting an old style. It feels like the old style has come forward to meet the modern ear.
And then there’s Emmylou Harris—the emotional key that unlocks the piece. Harris has always had a rare ability to sound both pure and weathered at once, as if her voice carries sunlight and dust in the same syllable. In this setting, she isn’t chasing the spotlight; she’s being used the way great roots singers are used in the best collaborations: as truth. Her phrasing has that familiar Emmylou quality—unforced, precise, almost conversational—yet it lands like scripture because the world around it is so dark.
The meaning of the medley becomes clearer the moment “Snake Song” enters. Townes Van Zandt’s lyric is a moral riddle dressed as seduction—an invitation and a warning in the same smile. Even the title suggests what the song believes about human nature: beauty can carry poison; gentleness can hide teeth. When this song is embedded into Lawless, it stops being merely metaphorical. It becomes a thesis for the whole Prohibition mythos: people want what they shouldn’t touch, and they touch it anyway—because loneliness and hunger are persuasive forces.
The “Fire in the Blood” motif, meanwhile, feels like the body’s version of fate: something inherited, something burning, something you can’t reason away. The soundtrack’s notes even highlight how central that theme is—so central that the song “Fire in the Blood” (as a standalone piece on the album) received a Satellite Award for Best Original Song. Even if the medley isn’t the award’s official recipient, it borrows the same combustible spirit: the sense that violence, desire, and family legacy are all running through the bloodstream.
What lingers after the track ends is the way it refuses easy comfort. There’s no neat “chorus resolution,” no pop catharsis. Instead, it leaves you with an older kind of wisdom: that longing is powerful, but so is the cost of longing; that a sweet voice can be telling you something dangerous; that the past—especially the American past—often sings prettiest when it’s trying to warn you.
That’s why Emmylou Harris belongs here so naturally. She has always made songs feel like memory, even when they’re new. On “Fire in the Blood / Snake Song,” she turns a film soundtrack track into something more intimate: a small, flickering lantern held up against a night full of shadows—steady enough to see by, but not bright enough to pretend the shadows aren’t there.
