A tribute album called Petty Country came out last week; as the title may suggest, it’s a bunch of country music artists doing Tom Petty songs.
It’s… hm. I have a fraught relationship with country music, so this is maybe not quite my thing. But I’m not writing it off completely.
Some of the songs are… say you imagined in your head “what would this Tom Petty song sound like if it were covered by a generic country music singer?” And it’s that. Still a couple of those sound, you know, kinda good.
Some of them though are a bit more inspired. Wynonna Judd and Lainey Wilson duet on “Refugee”, which is very solid. Someone named “Dierks Bentley” adds a bluegrass thing to “American Girl” which fits more than it may seem like.
On the other hand, someone named “Thomas Rhett” ruins “Wildflowers”. That song needs to be sparse, and there’s too much going on in this version.
Someone named “Margo Price” plays a good song called “Ways to be Wicked” which I had never heard before. While I’m not a super expert on Tom Petty deep cuts, I’m not bad, but this was way too deep for me. I had to look it up and it’s from Nobody’s Children, a disc of previously-unreleased songs on the mid-90s box set Playback (disc 6, specifically). Nice job digging that one up. Mike Campbell (Petty’s long time collaborator and guitar player, who also co-wrote this song) plays and sings on it too along with Margo.
The definite highlight though is Dolly Parton singing “Southern Accents”. Maybe this is a bit “Dolly Parton is a good singer: news at 11”, but yes, she does nail it.
I would say if you like country music check it out: certainly Tom Petty was a solid gold songwriter so there are artists you may know more than I do playing some of the best songs of the past 50 years. If you’re more iffy on the full-on country sound like I am, then maybe it’s still worth giving a listen, because again, great songs, right?
