Two collaborative covers show the influence of seventies country on today’s music scene.
“Tulsa Time”
Julian Taylor & Jim Cuddy
Written by Danny Flowers
Jonathan Keefe: Taylor is blessed with one of contemporary music’s smoothest voices, so he’s a natural choice to tackle a cover of one of Don Williams’ classic hits. Here, Taylor trades verses with the equally mellow Cuddy, and this version of “Tulsa Time” plays out as two old friends swapping stories about how they both long to return home.
The arrangement sticks perhaps too closely to Williams’ hit, but it’s an arrangement that plays just as well in 2025 as it did in 1978. The selling point is the interplay between these two great singers and their tight harmony work. Taylor’s very strong 2024 album, Pathways, would have benefited from an uptempo romp like this, so it’s refreshing to hear him cut loose a bit. It’s not revolutionary, but sometimes a well-executed cover just hits right. A-
Kevin John Coyne: I love Don Williams and adore most of his hits, but I’ve never liked “Tulsa Time.”
I blame Billy Ray Cyrus for cribbing so much of “Achy Breaky Heart” from it.
But I sure enjoyed “Tulsa Time” by Julian Taylor and Jim Cuddy. I’m not sure if there’s a meaningful change in tempo, but it’s a much lighter record than the Williams original, which plodded along with dull determination. I found myself singing along with one of the great sing along songs for the very first time.
Maybe it works so much better for me because it’s a duet and it feels like a conversation between two friends on the way home. They’re good company for each other during the journey.
It’s still “Tulsa Time,” but it’s in a time zone I can get behind. B+
“Please Please Please”
Sabrina Carpenter featuring Dolly Parton
Written by Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff, and Sabrina Carpenter
KJC: One of the underreported outcomes of country radio slamming its door closed to women at the turn of the century is that an entire generation of female singers decided it wasn’t worth their time to knock on it.
Olivia Newton-John was once an aberration, initially finding success in country music in the early seventies but definitively going full pop by the early eighties. But Taylor Swift started the modern trend, followed closely behind by Kacey Musgraves and Maren Morris.
I’m glad Carpenter initially didn’t bother with Music Row, launching a successful pop career and doing well enough to get a feature with the most significant living country artist on a re-release of her best single to date. “Please, Please, Please” is a smart and subversive record that Parton is perfect for, and the new arrangement highlights how much of an influence she is on Carpenter, as a singer and as a songwriter.
Sign me up for a hostile takeover of country music from today’s pop ladies. A
JK: The positive– and fully earned– reception to her Tiny Desk concert, in which she performed the massive pop hits from Short N Sweet with country-forward arrangements that were heavy on the steel guitar and fiddle, has brought Carpenter here. With her razor-sharp humor and flair for the dramatic, she’s clearly learned the right lessons from Dolly Parton’s imperial era. And if we weren’t going to get Laura Bell Bundy to be the pop-country superstar she should’ve been, I’ll champion Carpenter in this mode.
The new production on “Please Please Please” works brilliantly: The sparing use of synthesizers is perfectly attuned to Carpenter’s world-conquering pop, while the country instruments have ample room to breathe on the verses. And, of all of her hit singles, this is the one that scans most naturally as a country song. The line, “Don’t bring me to tears when I just did my makeup so nice” makes me think of Julie Roberts’ should’ve-been-a-hit, “Men & Mascara” as an obvious forebearer.
Like Parton at her best, Carpenter is fully in on every one of her jokes, and she’s savvy enough to know when the joke’s on her. “I heard that you’re an actor / So act like a stand-up guy” is the kind of line Parton might have written herself. The edits to the song itself work, too. Let’s be real: Dolly was never going to sing the word “motherfucker,” and Carpenter knew better than to ask her to. Really, everything about this works the way it should. The irony is that this version of “Please Please Please” proves exactly how much Carpenter gets right. A
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