Dierks Bentley Imagined ‘American Girl’ Different
Dierks Bentley’s latest single is his version of Tom Petty’s classic, “American Girl” from Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty. When Dierks decided to tackle the song for the project, he decided to reimagine it as a bluegrass song, which he admits seemed a little daunting at first, but it was a challenge he was glad he took on.
Dierks told us, “It’s always a big challenge. Reimagine a song that really doesn’t need to be reimagined. You know, it’s like your favorite movie that someone’s gone and redone again. You’re like, ‘Why?’ The original was so good. But we wanted to do it anyway. So, we knew going into it, we wanted to keep the core essence of what the song is, that energy, the vocals kind of on that knife’s edge that’s just got this angst behind it.”
He added, “I feel like our track is something you could listen to, and you’ll go, oh, that’s definitely Dierks’s version of Petty. They didn’t lose the original. You know, it’s like the national anthem. You want to stay pretty close to the original, but you got to give your own little flair. And I feel like we did in this one. It really turned out great. I was so excited when I walked out of the studio.”
Tom Petty first recorded and released “American Girl” in 1976. It was released as a single but it didn’t chart that high in the US. He re-released the song in 1994 as a second single from his Greatest Hits album and it did little better. Despite its low chart success, it became one of Petty’s most popular songs.
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Luke Bryan has become the go-to guy in country music to help teach other country stars’ kids how to fish, especially since he has his own lake on his property just outside of Nashville.
We’ve seen pictures of him with Thomas Rhett’s kids and Dierks Bentley’s kids, so when we talked to Dierks, we wondered what he could maybe teach Luke or his kids in return.
Dierks told us, “I can fish a little bit too. When we got out there, he started kinda showing me up in front of my kids, and I had to get out there pretty quick and reel one in. But he talked to me a lot about aviation, you know, how that helps my family and getting back and forth.
He added joking, “And I could probably show Luke how to put on a proper country show. I could show his boys how to do that, ’cause Luke can’t do that (big laugh).”
