Yeah, might want to avoid the comment section on this one…
Lara Trump, wife of Donald Trump’s son Eric, announced last night that she would be releasing an acoustic version of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” after having released a full band version back in September.
“I Won’t Back Down” was the lead single to Petty’s first solo album titled Full Moon Fever in 1989. It’s gone on to become one of his biggest hits and has been covered by a who’s who of musical artists over the years, like Ronnie Dunn and Johnny Cash on his America III: Solitary Man project.
Now, I’m not going to claim that I knew she had released a cover a few months ago, but somehow this crossed my feed and I felt obligated to give it a listen because of my position here…
Objectively, both versions are pretty horrendous. The vocals are drowning in auto-tune (you could tell me it’s a T-Pain song and I’d believe you) and really there’s nothing about it that makes me want to listen to it again. Honestly I can’t believe I made it through the half of both I did get through.
So when you take that into consideration and then add in her last name, you’re naturally going to get quite a bit of blowback…
Let’s take a quick look at what people had to say on X, shall we?
And there are plenty more where that came from…
I’m all for someone doing something just because they enjoy it and props to her for actually putting this out there, but man, this just isn’t the move.
Regardless of your politics, we can all say that it’s just not good. If you’d like to take a listen, I’ll put the videos down below.
Full Band Version
Acoustic Version
