No, Tom Petty Did Not Hate Country Music

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You almost hate to even broach this subject from fear of giving it too much oxygen. But no, Tom Petty did not hate country music. He loved country music. Tom Petty was a roots rocker from Florida that was heavily influenced by country music.

If Tom Petty emerged today and was releasing albums like Wildflowers and Full Moon Fever, his music would probably be classified as country, or at least Americana. Tom Petty commonly performed the song “The Image of Me” in concert that was written by Wayne Kemp, and popularized by Conway Twitty.

It was Tom Petty’s appreciation and respect for country music that inspired him to speak out about what was happening with the genre in 2013. This is when Bro-Country and acts like Florida Georgia Line were just getting hot, and causing a lot of consternation about the direction of country music both inside and outside of the genre. While speaking with Rolling Stone in 2013, Tom Petty said,

Well, yeah I mean, I hate to generalize on a whole genre of music, but it does seem to be missing that magic element that it used to have. I’m sure there are people playing country that are doing it well, but they’re just not getting the attention that the shittier stuff gets. But that’s the way it always is, isn’t it?

But I hope that kind of swings around back to where it should be. But I don’t really see a George Jones or a Buck Owens or any anything that fresh coming up. I’m sure there must be somebody doing it, but most of that music reminds me of rock in the middle Eighties where it became incredibly generic and relied on videos. I don’t want to rail on about country because I don’t really know much about it, but that’s what it seems like to me.

These comments have since been taken out-of-context by numerous people to make it seem like Tom Petty hated country music, period. But the whole reason Rolling Stone reporter Patrick Doyle asked Petty about country music is because he saw Petty perform at the Beacon Theater in New York where Petty explained to the audience the depth of his country roots after playing a version of The Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil.”

Petty told the Beacon Theater crowd that the country music he listened to growing up was “not like it is today, like bad rock with a fiddle.” Then Petty and The Heartbreakers played Conway Twitty’s “The Image of Me.”

Tom Petty was not alone in criticizing modern country at the time. 2013 is when multiple artists both inside and outside of country music started speaking up about the direction of the genre in what Saving Country Music coined at the time the Season of Discontent. This included Alan Jackson, Gary Allan, Kacey Musgraves, and others. But none of these people “hated” country music. They hated the direction it was going and its modern superstars.

Recently the website Country Chord published an article titled, “Apparently Tom Petty Didn’t Like Country Music And That Just Doesn’t Sit Right With Luke Combs.” The article highlights an interview Combs did with Bobby Bones did in 2020, though it was a clip posted by a Bobby Bones-affiliated Tik-Tok account in July that lead to the re-emergence of this clip.

Combs says in the clip, “I just have this thing that hurts my heart a little bit about Tom Petty because I know he hated country music, and that hurts me a lot.”

But of course, this isn’t true.

It won’t come as a surprise to anybody that Bobby Bones then makes the situation even worse by characterizing Tom Petty as a “punk guy.”

“Ronnie Dunn was recently talking about him and Tom Petty … because Tom Petty was like a punk guy. He talks about Tom Petty when he met him as being a guy who was playing punk music.”

@nashvillepodcastnetwork @Luke Combs ♬ I Won't Back Down – Tom Petty


Now we’re really getting into the weeds, but apparently Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn did meet Tom Petty in 1976 while Petty was recording his debut album on Sunset Blvd., and Dunn was introduced to him as a “punk” musician. But to characterize Tom Petty as “punk guy” in 2024 feels like quite a stretch, especially to attempt to excuse why Tom Petty didn’t like country music.

What both Bobby Bones and Luke Combs go on to say is that if Tom Petty were around today, he probably would be classified as country. This is indeed true. Heartbreakers members Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench are regular collaborators in the country world these days with Marty Stuart and others. If Tom Petty hadn’t died in 2017, he might have made his own country album.

But let the record reflect that Tom Petty did not hate country music. This is a canard that needs to be squashed right here, right now. Tom Petty loved country. That’s why like other artists or even an outlet like Saving Country Music that rose to prominence due to the hatred of Bro-Country, Tom Petty spoke up, and put his foot down. It’s also one of the many reasons that in the coming years, country music would reject Bro-Country as the dominant influence in the genre.

This story has been updated to reflect that the original Bobby Bones and Luke Combs interview was from 2020.

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