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Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Southern Accents

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Southern Accents Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Southern Accents
Released: 1985

Southern Accents Lyrics

There's a southern accent, where I come from
The young 'uns call it country
The Yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin'
But everything is done, with a southern accent
Where I come from

Now that drunk tank in Atlanta's
Just a motel room to me
Think I might go work Orlando
If them orange groves don't freeze
I got my own way of workin'
But everything is run, with a southern accent
Where I come from

For just a minute there I was dreaming
For just a minute it was all so real
For just a minute she was standing there, with me

There's a dream I keep having
Where my mama comes to me
And kneels down over by the window
And says a prayer for me
I got my own way of prayin'
But everyone's begun
With a southern accent
Where I come from

I got my own way of livin'
But everything gets done
With a southern accent
Where I come from

Writer/s: PETTY, TOM
Publisher: Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Southern Accents

Petty: "That may be my favorite among my songs - just in terms of a piece of pure writing. I remember writing it very vividly. It was in the middle of the night and I was playing it on the piano at home in Encino. I was just singing into my cassette recorder and suddenly these words came out. I was at the point in my career where I was very much trying to find some new ground. I thought I had used up what I had started with and I wanted a new direction. We had lived in California for about 10 years at that point and I started thinking about growing up in northern Florida, which is a lot different from Miami Beach. It's close to Georgia and I came from a real Southern family, and I wanted to address that world. Once I came up with this song, I decided to write an entire album about the theme."

Charles Kelley covered this for his debut solo album, The Driver, which was produced by Paul Worley. The Lady Antebellum member first performed the song with Trisha Yearwood back in 2013 at the Petty Fest in Nashville. "I'd always loved that song, and I always thought it would make a good country song, but I never thought about it necessarily as something Lady Antebellum would do," Kelley told Rolling Stone Country.

Kelley is joined by Stevie Nicks on his version. "It's really funny, when we first started the record, one of the things Paul and I talked about was trying not to maybe have a female harmony singer," he said. "[But Nicks] is the biggest Tom Petty fan. Paul kind of goes through the channels, and somehow it comes back that she wants to sing on it, so I was like, 'Of course. It's Stevie Nicks. Yes. She's going to sing on it.' So I already broke my rule of no females on the record."

Kelley told Radio.com that every time he hears the song, it reminds him of how his father grew up. "He was one of those guys that really did walk five miles to school, and had to work on the farm after school, and did things like that," he said. "So I always kind of picture him in my mind when I'm singing that song."