Fallout's Season 2 Soundtrack Resurrects This 1960 Western Banger

Long before it was used prominently in an early Season 2 episode of the Prime Video post-apocalyptic sci-fi Western "Fallout," "Big Iron" was a hit single way back in 1960. The year before, country singer Marty Robbins, fascinated by the Old West and the cowboy ways of yore, recorded "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs," a concept album of story songs about 19th century rebels and gunslingers. Following the ascendance of "El Paso," a song where someone dies at the end, to the No. 1 position, Robbins released "Big Iron." That one also ends in death, as a fearsome young outlaw named Texas Red meets his end at the hand of a traveling lawman, with both men brandishing a "big iron" gun.

Rolling out in December 2025, "Fallout" Season 2 incorporates lots of throwback pop, jazz, and country songs to set a mood and create some eerie juxtaposition between date songs and the brutal events that take place in a nuclear-ravaged world of the future. But the decision to revive and include "Big Iron" makes sense for many reasons.

"Big Iron" certainly fits with the setting and sensibility of "Fallout." Set centuries in the future, after nuclear annihilation renders the Earth uninhabitable and much of humanity dead, survivors emerge from a bunker-based society to wander the wastes and engage in showdowns and manhunts. Those are both themes endemic to Western movies and Western songs — like "Big Iron." The first season of "Fallout" was an adaptation in part of the 1997 video game of the same name. The second season is heavily inspired and informed by the sixth game in the series, "Fallout: New Vegas," released in 2010. The playing of "Big Iron" is an obvious reference to that title.

Players could listen to the Marty Robbins hit on an in-game, in-world radio station in "Fallout: New Vegas." The success of the game fueled a resurgence of "Big Iron," sending it way above "El Paso" on the list of Robbins' most-streamed songs on Spotify. Rather than fading away like so many songs from the '60s that aged terribly, the delightfully old-school tale about a Wild West gunfight was also thoroughly memed online, with countless social media and YouTube denizens churning out commentaries, parodies, and remixes building around "Big Iron."