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The 20 Greatest Tom Petty Songs: Critic's Picks
Ask your average wannabe rock star whose career they'd most want to trade with, and they'll say Tom Petty. If they're smart, anyway.
It
might not be the most obvious pick, since at no point in his life
was Petty ever the biggest rock star, nor the most iconic, the most
acclaimed, the most influential or the most ostentatious. Rather, his
was a career you could take home to Mom: Relatively void of dizzying
highs or petrifying lows, but dependable and rock-solid, liked and
respected by nearly all and vilified by precious few. Petty died on Monday (Oct. 2) at age 66 after suffering cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home.
Petty released 10 albums between 1976 and 1999 and all of them were at least certified gold; his most recent, 2014's Hypnotic Eye, was the first Billboard
200-topper of his career. He came up on '70s FM but still thrived in
the '80s and '90s on MTV; he sold out arena shows until the day he died.
(OK, until 11 days before the day he died. Still pretty good.) His life may not have always been as frictionless as his catalog -- he even kinda warned against assuming that it was in one of his biggest hits
-- but his music never soured, and neither did his fans; Petty's
ultimate legacy may be as proof that adult affability could be as
magnetic a rock-star quality as animal charisma.
And most importantly, he had the songs. They weren't songs that
signified a ton about who you were or where you came from -- while peers
like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen wore their home states like
license plates, many of Petty's fans probably would have trouble picking
out his Gainesville, Florida roots from a multiple-choice question --
and liking them meant nothing about your taste in music other than that
you weren't violently opposed to rock music as a concept. But they were
songs that you lived for your entire life, songs whose casual, chiming
perfection very unassumingly lodged in your heart forever. Tellingly,
Petty's best-selling set by a mile remains 1993's Diamond-certified Greatest Hits;
few of his singles had the largesse to be world-conquerors, but add 'em
all up and just about every household in America needed to own at least
one cassette copy.
Here are the 20 best Tom Petty songs. Crank them up, give them life, breathe them in like oxygen.
20. "You Got Lucky" (Long After Dark, 1982)
A
delectable moment of synth-pop swagger from the rarely malevolent
Petty. "Good love is hard to find/ You got lucky, babe, when I found
you," Petty taunts on the chorus, with the keys chiming in like backing
singers to provide further shoulder-dusting.
19. "Ain't Love Strange" (Let Me Up (I've Had Enough), 1987)
A buried gem on Petty's only pre-'94 LP not to notch at least one song on his Greatest Hits,
rollicking and twangy and red-blooded enough to have featured on a
late-'80s Steve Earle album. The harmonies and ringing guitars that lead
the chorus back into the verse are also pure Fab Four; apparently Petty
passed the audition because within a year he'd be in a band with one of 'em.
18. "I Won't Back Down" (Full Moon Fever, 1989)
A melody so fundamental one of the biggest pop hits of this decade could rip it off without even realizing it,
and a similarly straight-laced message that Petty's fanbase could take
to heart: "You can stand me up at the gates of hell/ But I won't back
down." He sings it with a shrug rather than a sneer; Tom Petty never
needed to be bossy to be the boss.
17. "Fault Lines" (Hypnotic Eye, 2014)
Tom Petty's rock relevance had inevitably waned by the 21st century, but the songs never really dried up -- 2014's Hypnotic Eye,
now to stand as his final LP, was one of the best of his later years,
with the alternately smoky and swampy "Fault Lines" an obvious
highlight. "I've got a few of my own fault lines running under my life" as a chorus hoo is obviously peak Petty: hard-lived and tough-lucked, but still grinning through it.
16. "You Don't Know How It Feels" (Wildflowers, 1994)
Petty's
final massive crossover hit, with a groove that out-saunters "The
Joker" and a sentiment that sways back and forth between supreme chill
to existential angst with such wicked insouciance that of course
the post-grunge era couldn't turn it down. "Let me get to the point/
Let's roll another joint": It was even funnier because he knew there was
no way MTV was gonna let him get away with it.
15. "Breakdown" (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1976)
The
breakout hit that back-doored Tom Petty into the mainstream -- so
sneaky and surreptitious in its meandering strut that it merely peeked its head
into the Hot 100's top 40 before slipping away. But wow, that chorus:
Tom's a cool cat until the second he explodes into that first "BA-BY!," but by refrain's end, you can tell pretty well why he's not afraid of you running away anytime soon.
14. "Change of Heart" (Long After Dark, 1982)
Though
his career may have been something like the photo-negative version of
Tom Petty's, Replacements leader Paul Westerberg's best songs struck a
lot of the same chords (literally and figuratively) as the King
Heartbreaker -- exemplified by songs like "Change of Heart," which split
the difference between power pop and bar band like the best late-period
Replacements songs, only a half-decade earlier. Most of Petty's period
singles that failed to make the Greatest Hits cut were justifiable exclusions; this one was a legit miss.
13. "Mary Jane's Last Dance" (Greatest Hits, 1993)
One of the ultimate exception-that-proves-the-rule Greatest Hits
bonus cuts, which thanks to Petty's finest "Subterranean Homesick
Blues" impression and a Kim Bassinger corpse-bride cameo, actually
became iconic in its own right. Released today, Red Hot Chili Peppers
would probably have to give Petty multiple writing credits for their
bold-faced "Mary Jane's" rip on "Dani California," though Anthony Kiedis hasn't written a lyric as vivid as "It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone" since at least '94.
12. "Asshole" (Songs and Music From "She's the One," 1996)
Tom Petty's soundtrack of songs-and-incidentals for the mid-'90s Edward Burns rom-com She's the One
is nearly as forgotten as the movie itself, but it contained its fair
share of winners. The finest may have been this uncharacteristically
minor-key Beck cover,
whose fantastical lyrics ("She dangles carrots/ Makes you feel
embarrassed") and squirming delivery over sighing, spacious production
actually beat Beck's own Mutations to the punch by a couple years.
11. "Runnin' Down a Dream" (Full Moon Fever, 1989)
Not
a ton of Petty classics would list jam-kicking-out as a top priority,
but "Runnin' Down a Dream" blisters from the time its opening riff comes
zig-zagging off the lot. Certainly on the short list for the greatest
driving songs in classic rock history, largely for its
zooming-beyond-the-horizon fretwork, but also because it understands how
the most meaningful journeys behind the wheel are 30 percent
geographic, 70 percent metaphoric.
10. "Refugee" (Damn the Torpedoes, 1979)
Underrated scene from this year's The Defiant Ones
doc: Jimmy Iovine trying to impress Dr. Dre with his car's speaker
setup by blasting The Heartbreakers' "Refugee" with Dre semi-trapped in
the passenger seat, Jimmy visibly beaming over his own production
handiwork. To be fair, Dre probably gets it: "Refugee" remains
undeniable, a power-rock mission statement that you could see filling up
another couple stadium rows with each chest-thumping measure -- and
those organs friggin' kill.
9. "The Waiting" (Hard Promises, 1981)
The
"Turn! Turn! Turn!" of the '80s? Maybe not -- less God-plagiarizing,
and lower-charting -- but it certainly got the guitars and the chorus
right, with a beautiful lyric about the difficulty of staying patient
through romantic frustration, whose message has unfortunately been
reduced by TV and sports montages to a rough equivalent of the Final
Jeopardy music. No taking the shine off those guitars, though.
8. "A Face in the Crowd" (Full Moon Fever, 1989)
Jeff
Lynne, ELO frontman and studio nut, must've seemed an odd sonic
soulmate for a performer as generally lean as Petty when they first
started hooking up in the late '80s. But Lynne's walls of acoustics
aerated Petty's songwriting to an unforeseeable degree, taking him out
of the gutter and into the clouds, where it turned out he easily had the
melodic and vocal gifts to stay afloat. "A Face in the Crowd" was a
prime example: Lynne provides Petty with a gorgeous bed of gently
devastating six strings, and over it the rock star lays one of his most
brilliantly understated lyrics -- a heartbreaking love story that only
gives you the first act, Petty lamenting the unlikeliness of the
relationship's beginning while leaving it to you to infer how, why or
even if it actually ends. His phrasing on the chorus tells you all you
really need to know.
7. "Wildflowers" (Wildflowers, 1994)
About
as lovely as Petty ever got, all capo'd strumming and beatific pianos
and idyllic lyrics ("You belong among the wildflowers/ You belong in a
boat out at sea"). It flirts with getting a little too Stars Hollow in
spots, but then there's just the right undercurrent of melancholy
centering the melody -- appropriate for a lyric that seems to be
anticipating his upcoming divorce -- making it one of the most powerful
Petty songs never to be released as a single.
6. "Don't Come Around Here No More" (Southern Accents, 1985)
Petty
survived deep into the '80s almost entirely on his own terms, and while
the experimentation with synths and drum machines on singles like
"Don't Come Around Here No More" may have had some old-school fans
clutching their A-shirts, the song is such a strange brew that even
then, any trend-hopping accusations would've seemed wildly implausible.
Intoxicating stuff, though: Psychedelic pop as the Paisley Underground
never bothered to consider, with a cavernous faux-drum beat, buzzing,
stereo-panned sitars and no clear delineation between verse, chorus and
bridge -- and a video just as imaginative and perverse to match.
5. "Listen to Her Heart" (You're Gonna Get It!, 1978)
"Listen
to Her Heart" may not have been the only song ever inspired by Ike
Turner acting like a dick at a showbiz party -- odds are, it isn't --
but it's almost certainly the best. The verses are a master class in
harmonies and rhyme structuring, and the chorus sets up its tell-off so
cleanly that it lands almost like a punchline: "She might need a lot of
loving/ But she don't need you!" By Petty's standards, "Listen to Her
Heart" rates as relatively minor in his catalog -- it only peaked at No.
59 on the Hot 100 -- but the fact that it's still worth a whole chapter
in any half-decent power-pop textbook is indicative of just how high
those standards really are.
4. "Free Fallin'" (Full Moon Fever, 1989)
Say
what you will about "Free Fallin'," but Tom Petty's song catalog simply
had to have a cut like it: one that ensures that his music will be kept
alive by the John Mayers of the world for as long as there are acoustic
guitars (and open-hearted teenagers who only know how to play three
chords on 'em). Understandable if true Petty-heads feel about this one
the way that most Zeppelin fans feel about "Stairway to Heaven," but
understand there's only a handful of rock songwriters who could (or
would) ever write a third verse as delicately powerful as "I wanna glide
down over Mulholland/ I wanna write her name in the sky/ Gonna free
fall out into nothing/ Gonna leave this world for a while," and most of
them are in the Hall of Fame for a reason.
3. "Learning to Fly" (Into the Great Wide Open, 1991)
Petty's own "Solsbury Hill,"
with a knockout combination of dreamy-but-determined acoustics, soaring
production and enigmatic lyrics that just give it that sense of it
being about something more. Regardless of your specific
"Learning to Fly" interpretation, the yearning melody and, uh,
yearning-er lyrics have transcended Petty and Lynne's specific recording
and now just exist in the pop ether; Google "Learning to Fly dance
remix" sometime if you need an idea of the song's transmutability.
Still, this particular week, you'd be forgiven for drawing meaning --
and probably a lump in the throat -- from Petty's final verse lyrics:
"So I've started out for God knows where/ I guess I'll know when I get
there."
2. "Don't Do Me Like That" (Damn the Torpedoes, 1979)
Try
to find a flaw in this song if you want, the investigation might take
you long enough for Netflix to make a docuseries about it. Nobody in the
late '70s was writing rock songs this tight, this seamless or this good
-- not Elvis Costello, not Joe Jackson, not even the goddamn Ramones.
From the opening full-band crash to Petty's closing "DON'T! DONT'!"
yawps, there's not a centimeter of sonic space wasted: The economy of
each drum fill, each mini-guitar lick, each couplet -- who the hell else
could write verse couplets as punchy as "If you were in the public eye/
Giving someone else a try"? -- is something songwriters and producers
could spend a lifetime studying and still not grasp in full. And Tom
Petty still nearly gave it to the J. Geils Band, because he's motherfucking Tom Petty.
1. "American Girl" (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1976)
It
didn't even hit the Hot 100. "American Girl" was a flop when it was
originally released, coming closest to scraping the U.S. charts in 1994
when a re-released peaked at No. 9 on Billboard's Bubbling Under chart. But multiple generations of FM radio play, inspired movie and TV
syncs, and covers on covers on covers have turned it into more than
just a classic rock standard -- it's practically part of the American
literary canon at this point. The sweep of its opening chords (and
Petty's whispered "Chhhhk!" echo), the majesty of its opening
lyrics ("Well she was an American girl, raised on promises..."), the
heart-busting release of its call-and-response chorus... rock music just
does not get more rousing. Decades later, when The Strokes pilfer a riff here or the Japandroids swipe a shout there, it barely even registers, because it just feels like borrowing from rock's own DNA at this point.
And yet, what really makes "American Girl" special is that there are
still mysteries about it to be solved. What's the one little promise the
American Girl is sworn to keep? Is the guy who creeps back in her
memory in the second verse and ruins the moment a lost love, or
something far more despairing or sinister? Where does that strangely
disquieting funk breakdown after the second chorus come from, and where
does it disappear to after? And most importantly: Why does Petty hold
back on a potential third chorus, depriving audiences of one of the
potential great singalong moments in rock history? Hundreds of listens
later, maybe you have your own answers and maybe you don't, but the
widescreen drama and open-road possibility of the song make them worth
continually asking, and allow "American Girl" to outlive just about any
rock song that actually bothered climbing the charts in '76.
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