I’m know I’m not the only country fan that had a punk rock phase at one point in their life.
I grew up on Alan Jackson, George Strait, Reba, Brooks and Dunn and the rest of the ’90s country greats, but I also got into bands like Blink 182, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday etc… there was a quick rap phase too (lookin’ at you 50 Cent), but we’re not going to get into that right now…
Anyways, I remember John Mayer saying this a long time ago on an episode of CMT Crossroads, but as a music fan (and shitty musician myself), it stuck with me. He said something to the effect of
“Song don’t have styles. They’re just a framework.”
And it’s pretty true.
Once you have the song itself written, you can make it sound like a pop song or a blues song, a country song or a rock song. You can play with tempo and melody and arrangement and make something completely new and unique out of something old and familiar.
Enter Alex Melton.
Alex recently blew up on Tik Tok with a punk rock cover of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” but he has a ton of other cool covers on his YouTube Channel. He’s done punk covers of country songs, country covers of punk songs, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” in various different styles, Post Malone covers… it’s pretty cool stuff.
This one is a punk rock cover of the Dixie Chicks’ 1998 hit single, and one of their biggest hits of all time, “Wide Open Spaces.”
The Dixie Chicks (who now go by just The Chicks) going punk rock?
For some reason it just WORKS.
He also does country versions of popular punk rock songs from the early 2000s.
Here’s a country version of Blinks 182’s 2004 hit “I Miss You.”
