Dierks Bentley: Tom Petty Artifact Prominent In Music Video

Dierks Bentley is one of many country stars who are part of a Tom Petty tribute album called Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty.

Dierks just released the music video for his cover of Tom Petty's "American Girl." In the new video, the country star straps on and plays Petty's signature Rickenbacker guitar that was flown in from the late rock star's archives in California for the shoot.

Bentley said of the music video, "Holding an instrument that carries so much musical history and significance was surreal; you could almost feel the stories resonate from it as I played it. Tom Petty's lyrics and delivery were a huge part of what made his music so impactful."

The official track list and release date for Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty will be announced in the coming weeks. The album will also feature covers of Petty songs by George Strait, Chris Stapleton, and Lainey Wilson.

"American Girl" was the last song performed in concert by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They played it to close out the encore of their performance on September 25, 2017, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, the final concert of their 40th Anniversary Tour.

The rock star died of complications from cardiac arrest after an accidental prescription medication overdose on October 2, 2017.

Petty took a swipe at modern country music in 2013 when on stage, he referred to it as "bad rock with a fiddle." He later told Rolling Stone in an interview, "I don't really see a George Jones or a Buck Owens or 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 80s, where it became incredibly generic and relied on videos." Clearly, country artists still love and respect his music.

Tom Petty was a bit like Tom Hanks: he was so great that after a while you almost took his greatness for granted. When compiling this list, we kept in mind that the man was putting out great music up until the very end, and we wanted to recognize some of his gems that didn't get as much love as they should have, including some of his final recordings.

We decided that anything he wrote was fair game: obviously his songs with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, as well as his three solo albums. We also included songs from Mudcrutch, his pre-Heartbreakers band (which included Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) who broke up in 1975 after recording a few songs; they reunited in 2007 and released a pair of albums. Of course, we included the Traveling Wilburys, focusing on the songs where Tom was the main singer, as well as the songs he wrote for Stevie Nicks, Roy Orbison and Roger McGuinn. We mostly went with studio recordings, but nevertheless, we still heartily recommend the 2008 box set The Live Anthology. We also decided against including covers (although we love his Byrds covers "So You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better," his cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" and his duet with Stevie Nicks on Jackie DeShannon's "Needles and Pins," to name a few). It's worth noting that we frequently referenced Paul Zollo's excellent book, Conversations With Tom Petty often, and we'd definitely recommend that book, as well as Warren Zanes' Tom Petty: The Biography.

Did we miss a few songs? Sure - Petty had waaaaay more than 50 great ones (and we're sure you'll let us know on social media what we missed). But for now, enjoy these, there might be some that you forgot about or some that you haven't even heard.

The highlight of Mudcrutch’s debut/reunion album (they only recorded a few singles before breaking up in the early ‘70s). Unfortunately, many wrote Mudcrutch off as a side-project. Had Petty kept “Scare Easy” for the Heartbreakers, it could have been a huge hit. He never played Heartbreakers songs with Mudcrutch, and vice-versa, which is a shame. And it’s kind of funny, in retrospect: if the Heartbreakers played Traveling Wilburys songs (including “Handle With Care”) -- reproducing parts by Dylan, Orbison and Harrison -- you’d think they could have pulled off Mudcrutch songs live (given the fact that ⅗ of Mudcrutch were also Heartbreakers).