In Spite of Ourselves

Prine alone wrote it, the only original on the album, and it is track fifteen at 3:32. It also plays over the closing credits of Daddy and Them, the Billy Bob Thornton film, which premiered on June 6, 2001; Prine plays Alvin Montgomery in it, and the film was shot in Arkansas in 1998. Prine said Thornton asked him to write a song for the ending and that he based it loosely, real loosely, on a couple of the characters. GratefulWeb says Thornton and Marty Stuart asked.

DeMent recalled that Prine faxed her the lyrics and that, coming out of the Pentecostal church, she thought she could not do it, though of the playful content, everybody loved it. Christgau wrote that she topped Prine throughout, as she was meant to, and called her a big, high, Holiness-steeped soprano. The chorus has the lines In spite of ourselves, we'll end up sittin' on a rainbow. GratefulWeb reports over 40 million streams by 2019, making it Prine's most successful song.

Viagra Boys covered it with Amy Taylor of Amyl and the Sniffers, released ahead of Welfare Jazz (January 8, 2021). Setlist.fm shows it as a Prine cover DeMent performed ten times as a guest, the most of any such song. Our node is titled with no live or remix marker, so it is presumably the album version, though we have not verified that.