“I was initially looking it up to sample it to turn into a new song,” he admits, “but it was just too great to mess with.” Instead, he cut a faithful version for last year’s remakes album On Top of the Covers. It’s an international language.”Īfter he identified “Tennessee Whiskey,” T-Pain says he considered incorporating it into one of his own tracks. “We actually compare women to liquor or tequila, in our case. “It has lot in common with a lot of Mexican music,” says León.

Thanks to that unexpected performance, Stapleton’s recording blasted off, topping the country charts and introducing his version to the likes of León. I’m sitting there thinking to myself, ‘How in the hell do you follow something like that?’” “But, man, when they played that song, the audience went crazy and it changed the whole tone of the show. “The performances up until Chris played were pretty good,” Dillon says. It was a watershed moment for Stapleton, for Nashville, and for the song itself. Then, in November 2015, Stapleton and Justin Timberlake sang it together at the CMA Awards. (Hargrove, whom Dillon calls “a free-spirited hippie,” died in 2010.)įor months, the single - which had been rearranged into a slow jam by borrowing the melody from Etta James’ 1967 song “I’d Rather Go Blind” - was only a middling success. “She jumped in on the verses and put the pedal to the floor,” says Dillon. Later that night, at Hargrove’s home, the two finished “Tennessee Whiskey” in, he recalls, about an hour. He’d already written a chorus: “You’re as smooth as Tennessee whiskey/You’re as sweet as strawberry wine/You’re as warm as a glass of brandy/And honey, I stay stoned on your love all the time.” But the rest of the song was proving elusive. In fact, Dillon wanted to write with Hargrove, whose songs had been covered by Olivia Newton-John, Lynn Anderson, and Tanya Tucker. “I think her sister thought I was trying to pick Linda up.” “Her sister was standing next to us and if looks could kill, I’d been a dead man,” he recalls. Impressed, Dillon went over and introduced himself after her set. “Tennessee Whiskey” dates back to 1980, when Dillon, then a rising songwriter and artist in his own right, ventured out to the Bluebird Cafe, Nashville’s legendary listening room, to hear Hargrove. Apart from T-Pain’s quiet-storm makeover, “Tennessee Whiskey” has recently been recast as reggae (by Cas Haley), R&B-soul (by Teddy Swims), stark Americana (by the late actor Harry Dean Stanton), and blues (by actress and singer Keala Settle) - just a few of the more than 50 covers on the market.Įvery Awful Thing Trump Has Promised to Do in a Second Term The number of remakes, though, isn’t as surprising as the variety of them. In December, a clip of T-Pain singing the song - without his once signature use of Auto-Tune - became a viral sensation, accruing 2.8 million views on his TikTok account and 2 million on Instagram.

After languishing for decades, it’s suddenly become ubiquitous, heard on officially released studio versions and a growing pile of homemade YouTube videos.

Songs from decades past are routinely revived or rediscovered, and that’s currently happening in a big way with “Tennessee Whiskey,” a 44-year-old honky-tonk song about salvation by someone who’s as smooth as the titular liquor. “I made it a part of my ‘sad playlist,’” T-Pain tells RS. The rapper-turned-singer didn’t recognize it, so he opened up Shazam to listen - and the result came back as “Tennessee Whiskey,” by Chris Stapleton. T-Pain was at a karaoke party last year when an R&B-flavored country ballad starting playing over the system.

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