The Top 11 on Season 13 of The Voice perform again before one is saved and one is eliminated. Last week, Team Adam lost Jon Mero and America saved Adam Cunningham. That leaves just two — Adam Cunningham and teenager Addison Agen on Team Adam. While Addison will sing the iconic Joni Mitchell ballad “A Case of You,” Adam Cunningham will sing the Tom Petty anthem “American Girl,” just weeks after Petty’s sudden death at the age of 66.
[Download Adam Cunningham’s version on iTunes]
“American Girl” was released in 1977. It was the second single on the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers self-titled debut album. Story goes “American Girl” was recorded on July 4, 1976, the bicentennial. In Paul Zollo’s 2005 book Conversations with Tom Petty, Petty said he wrote the song while living in California. “I was living in an apartment where I was right by the freeway. And the cars would go by…And I remember thinking that that sounded like the ocean to me. That was my ocean. My Malibu. Where I heard the waves crash, but it was just the cars going by. I think that must have inspired the lyric.” It’s got one of the most famous first lines in rock and roll: “She was an American girl, raised on promises…” The Voice airs Mondays and Tuesdays at 8pm on NBC.
