The songs of Toby Keith are getting an update, just in time for the Fourth of July. On Tuesday, Apple Music announced a new collection of six Keith songs, reimagined by some of today’s rising country stars. Apple Music Nashville Sessions: Toby Keith Covered features Megan Moroney, Ella Langley, Riley Green, Ashley McBryde, Parker McCollum, and Tucker Wetmore putting their own spin on songs like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “As Good As I Once Was.” The EP is streaming now.
Langley interprets the 1993 heartbreak ballad “Wish I Didn’t Know Now” and, in a statement, compares Keith to Dolly Parton as a “full package” type of artist. “I think he’s up there with her in the way where he is a full performer all the time. Everywhere he goes, and onstage, he gives 100% of himself. When he’s writing a song, he gives 100% of himself. I think that’s what it takes to be an artist like Toby Keith: giving your all, letting your fans in, and seeing who you are as a human being, because we’re just human beings at the end of the day.”
Moroney, meanwhile, chooses a more playful song, Keith’s 2002 hit “Who’s Your Daddy?” off Unleashed. “‘Who’s Your Daddy’ has become my band and I’s pre-show hype song and it felt like the perfect one to choose to cover,” Moroney said. “I’m excited to be a part of this series honoring Toby Keith and I hope you love my version as much as we do!”
Other songs include “A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action,” covered by McBryde; “Who’s That Man” by McCollum; “As Good As I Once Was” by Wetmore; and “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” — Keith’s 1993 debut single — imagined by Green.
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“I think because growing up in Alabama, we didn’t have a lot of cowboys. We didn’t have horses; we didn’t have big, long pastures like they got out in Texas and Oklahoma and all that. For me, that lifestyle of being out on the open range was so foreign to me, but also just seemed cool,” Green says. “I loved that song as a kid.”
Keith died in 2024 at 62. He was inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame later that year.