Justin Moore Delivers Knockout Cover Of Tom Petty’s “Here Comes My Girl” For New Country Tribute Album

Love me some Tom Petty. Of course, country music is my first love, but I did have myself quite the punk rock phase (IT'S NOT A PHASE, DAD) and do still listen to quite a bit of rock, all across the spectrum. Kings of Leon, Kaleo, The Killers, Whiskey Myers and Blackberry Smoke, I still throw on some of pop punk classics like Blink 182 and Taking Back Sunday, but when it comes to the music that came before my time... give me Tom Petty all damn day. Wildflowers and Full Moon Fever are on regular rotation in the Langeler house, so naturally I was pumped to see that country music was paying tribute to the late, great rock legend with a covers tribute album. Featuring Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Dolly Parton, Lainey Wilson and more, the record featured a number of timeless Petty hits like "Free Fallin'," "Southern Accents," "Learning To Fly," "I Won't Back Down" and a ton more. And for my money, Justin Moore's cover of "Here Comes My Girl" is the highlight of the record. "Here Comes My Girl" was the third single released from their 1979 album, Damn the Torpedoes, the album that really put Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the map. Written by  Tom Petty and guitar player Mike Campbell (who we've seen on stage with Chris Stapleton and George Strait recently), the song was written pretty quickly, but took some time to really nail down. In the book Conversations With Petty, Tom details how the song came to be, and confesses that he had trouble trying to figure out how to sing the verse to match Campbell's guitar demo. He finally landed on talking instead of singing... and a hit was born: “I struggled with that song for a little while. That’s really a great piece of music. I felt, ‘I have to learn this thing.' I’m not going to let it get away from me. And then I got the idea for the narration. And once I started that, it started falling into place." Justin Moore's version sticks pretty true to the original, as does most of the covers on the album, but damn if Justin doesn't absolutely nail it. Justin's Arkansas twang adds a little more country flavor to the track, as well as a little more energy and grit. I swear... I've had this one on repeat since Friday. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtnstOSSN_w&pp=ygUSaGVyZSBjb21lcyBteSBnaXJs And Tom's original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4nPa35CZPI&pp=ygUSaGVyZSBjb21lcyBteSBnaXJs