Toots & The Maytals On Soundtrack For Mark Wahlberg Film ‘The Family Plan’
Toots & The Maytals’ 1973 Reggae cover of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads is included on the soundtrack for Mark Wahlberg’s new action comedy, The Family Plan.
Released on Apple TV+ on December 15, the film stars Wahlberg as “Dan Morgan,” a former assassin who tries to live a normal life in Buffalo, New York. Michelle Monaghan co-stars as “Jessica Morgan,” the protagonist’s wife who knows nothing about her husband’s murderous past. The storyline follows “Dan” as he travels to Las Vegas with his family while secretly avoiding assassins.
Music supervisor Lucy Bright selected the songs that appeared throughout the movie, including Toots & The Maytals’ clever interpretation of Take Me Home, Country Roads from the Reggae band’s 1973 album In the Dark. The band’s version has Chris Blackwell, Dave Bloxham and Warrick Lyn credited as producers.
The song plays early in the movie, during the title sequence, as “Dan” sings along while driving a vehicle.
Other tracks featured in the film include Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby, Enya’s Only Time, Billie Eilish’s bad guy, Lizzo’s About Damn Time, and Artic Monkeys’ Do I Wanna Know?
Denvers’ original track, released in 1971, was certified Platinum in the US in 2017. It became one of four official state anthems for West Virginia in 2014.
The band’s frontman, Toots Hibbert, who died in 2020 at age 77, sings the song’s iconic chorus with a slight lyrical tweak: “Country road, take me home/To the place, I belong/West Jamaica, my oh my/Take me home, country road.”
In 2022, Toot’s Country Roads was featured in Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, starring Daniel Craig (as detective Benoit Blanc). The song previously appeared in the TV shows Outer Banks (2021), Good Girls (2021), My Name Is Earl (2008), and the film No Place Like Home (2006).
In 2021, Toots and The Maytals won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album for their album Go To Be Tough. It was the second Grammy Award for the band, who won the Best Reggae Album in 2004 with their album True Love.
Toots and his band were responsible for some of the most iconic songs in Reggae history, including Pressure Drop, Bam Bam, Sweet And Dandy, 54-46, Beautiful Woman, Time Tough, I’ll Never Grow Old, and Monkey Man.
Time Tough and I’ll Never Grow Old recently appeared on Showtime’s The Man Who Fell To Earth (2022) and Netflix’s Sweet Tooth (2023), respectively, while 54-46 has been featured in episodes of The Sara Cox Show (2019) and Narcos: Mexico (2018).