![]() Petty, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” was the THC-laced cherry on the intergenerational sundae. If “Free Fallin’ ” got Gen Xers listening to Mr. Tastes change, but by this time it was clear that Tom Petty is forever. ![]() Petty makes you feel bad for the poor kid even as you laugh at his wry delivery. Everything seems to be going swimmingly, at least until the last verse, where our hero hears the words every major-label artist dreads: “Their A & R man said ‘I don’t hear a single.’ ” Mr. The title track is an affectionate parable about a “rebel without a clue” named Eddie, who moves to L.A. He’s the reason the group’s next album, “Into the Great Wide Open,” has that refreshed glow. Petty in the Traveling Wilburys and on “Full Moon Fever,” came along as a producer when the singer returned to the Heartbreakers fold in 1991. Lynne, who formed a close working relationship with Mr. “Free Fallin’” marks the moment when Tom Petty proved he could handle the ’90s. But it’s a much kinder song: This time, he’s self-aware enough to acknowledge his own role in breaking her heart, and to admit he misses her. It’s essentially an update on “American Girl,” veering between awe-struck longing for the narrator’s dream lover and biting sarcasm toward the same. But the best and most important song on “Full Moon Fever” is “Free Fallin’,” the Top 10 hit that jump-started the second act of Mr. Several of its songs, including the pleasantly defiant “I Won’t Back Down,” the delightfully bizarre “Runnin’ Down a Dream” and a spot-on cover of the Byrds’ “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better,” are among his strongest work. Petty released in 1989, is his second front-to-back classic LP (the first was “Damn the Torpedoes,” a decade before). “Full Moon Fever,” the solo album that Mr. Petty teases a former flame or friend: “Maybe somewhere down the road a ways / You’ll think of me, wonder where I am these days.” ‘Free Fallin’’ (1989) The best part is the chorus, where a nonchalant Mr. Their 1988 debut as the Traveling Wilburys is mostly a curio for completists, but this gently swinging country tune is a gem that would have been a highlight among any of its participants’ solo releases that decade. with his friends George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison. It’s an unusual song, worth listening to if only for a fuller understanding of where he felt he came from. “Rebels,” the ballad that opens the album, is uncharacteristically explicit about his ties to the American South - at times the lyrics read like his version of the Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” - but, true to form, any pride that’s there is undercut by darker notes of doubt and shame. ![]() ![]() Petty famously broke his hand in a fit of pique during the recording of the Heartbreakers’ 1985 album “Southern Accents.” That’s a high price for the music that resulted, but it was mostly worth it. ![]() No longer needing to sell each song like it’s his only shot, he delivers the chorus with an understated smirk, like it’s no big deal - but good luck getting that melody out of your head after hearing it a few times. Petty’s love of the Byrds’ quite clearly, as he updates the older California group’s chiming chords and bittersweet yearning for a new generation. That led to songs like this FM radio staple, where you can hear Mr. Petty and his band into major stars by the time of its follow-up, “Hard Promises” (1981), he was a little more relaxed as a songwriter. The 1979 album “Damn the Torpedoes” and its three hit singles made Mr. At this stage in his career, he sang often about feeling ill-treated, but never with quite the electric charge heard here. Petty’s voice as he shouts the chorus is so piercing that it hardly matters whether anyone understands what, specifically, he means when he accuses his romantic partner of living “like a refugee.” The intensity of feeling is the point. In one of his most devilishly effective lead vocal performances, he made a needling sense of resentment sound like the most liberating thing in the world. Petty was doing much the same thing from well within the mainstream. While histories of this era often emphasize the ways that punk firebrands reined in rock’s self-serious bloat, “Don’t Do Me Like That” is a reminder that Mr. Petty and the Heartbreakers’ first Top 10 hit is a masterpiece of efficiency - at two minutes and 44 seconds, it’s all hook. ![]()
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