Years before starring in his breakout role as Duane Jackson in Peter Bogdanovich’s drama The Last Picture Show in 1971, which earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, Jeff Bridges was writing songs and ended up selling two to Quincy Jones.
“Lost in Space” was one of the songs Jones bought that was featured on the soundtrack of Peter Yates’ 1969 film John and Mary, starring Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, which Bridges called an “amazingly cool” moment. The film follows a young couple who meet one night at a bar, get immersed in talking about director Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 black comedy, Weekend, and end up going home together. The story unfolds the following day when they get to know one another better and decide if they have a future.
Though Bridges didn’t star in the film, he did perform “Lost in Space” for the soundtrack.
Lost in Space
I”m invisible
And the merriment goes on
Thousand people
Laughing, playing
I’m since fading
Beneath their laughter, I lay
The second song Bridges sold to Jones is still unknown.
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[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know Jeff Bridges Wrote]
‘Be Here Soon’ and ‘Crazy Heart’
As a musician, Bridges later played the piano in the 1989 film The Fabulous Baker Boys and performed with his band, the Abiders—named after his “The Dude” that “abides” character in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski—at a Los Angeles festival honoring the 1999 film in 2014.
In 2000, Bridges also released his first album, Be Here Soon, on an independent label, with David Crosby and co-producer Michael McDonald also featured on vocals. That year, Bridges also covered Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” with Kim Carnes for the film The Contender, then starred in the 2003 film Masked and Anonymous alongside one of his musical heroes, Bob Dylan.
“It’s a great blessing to just be alive with that guy,” Bridges said of Dylan. “It’s like being alive during Shakespeare’s time.”
After starring as the alcoholic, one-time country star Otis “Bad” Blake in the 2009 drama Crazy Heart, and performing a majority of the soundtrack to the film, Bridges released his eponymous album in 2011, produced by T-Bone Burnett, which featured several of his own songs, including “Falling Short,” “Tumbling Vine,” and “Slow Boat.”
By 2015, Bridges released another spoken-word ambient album, Sleeping Tapes, featuring music by TV and film composer Keefus Ciancia, followed by his 2025 release Slow Magic, 1977-1978, a collection of songs he originally recorded nearly 50 years earlier.
“People like to put you in this slot or that slot,” said Bridges after releasing his self-titled album. “Everybody likes to assume that you can only do one thing, that you can’t possibly be good at two things. But since Crazy Heart was about a musician, and I kind of pulled that off all right, I thought, Hey, maybe people will accept me now as a musician. My timing could be right.”
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