This song, it looks like. I wonder if it was regional. I was in college at the time, listening to the local alternative stations, and have no recollection of this song. It sounds very much like a lot of music around the time, but I’ve never heard this one.
ETA: Actually, it looks like the song was 1996. I was out-of-country from May to December of that year, so it’s possible that’s why I missed it. At any rate, it doesn’t seem to have survived the cut to what they replay on radio stations that include classic 90s rock here.
To me Tom Petty is to classic rock what Alan Jackson is to country music. Good musician, down to Earth, but the music is mostly mundane. Just like Alan Jackson I can listen to about any Tom Petty song and like it at least somewhat.
The author of the linked article writes “I’ve spent my entire life in pursuit of one Perfect Song. Tom Petty wrote at least 10, maybe more.”
Jeez I dunno. To me a ‘perfect song’ is maybe something like Just Like A Woman, or She Smiled Sweetly, or In My Life. Mere mortals may aspire, but it’s tough…
I think you could say TP was “severely competent” for sure.
For me, I grew up in a college town, big city, a multiversity of radio stations etc. and a center for rock clubs and indie tours.
In my experience, contemporaneously felt, the mats were the basis for the belief in a future in rock music as the dominant art form, for a long time, to a lot of people, and especially musicians, for all of the mid 80s.
No argument with Petty being a mainstream commercial artist that the mats never were. But TP was never an artistic threat like the mats. You could go back to the journo or the books to see. It depends how you like the mats I guess. At the time it seemed like REM and the Mats were bringing a sense of melody into music that kind of was lacking in the new wave, synthpop, punk, hardcore eras.
They overlapped roughly. I’d say Petty was '77 on and the Mats were '79 on. TP was another generation though.
The mats behaved badly on the Petty tour I hear and they were a spectacle. Meanwhile the audience just were not used to the material, and responded badly. And the mats’ basically felt about themselves, like I feel about them. But this was the heartland and a lot of people were not very open minded. Another defeat snatched from the jaws of glory.
One thing I’ve heard a few times since Petty’s death is, “He changed rock n’ roll forever.” No he didn’t, and if that’s the kind of thing the OP means, then I guess I see his point. Petty never grew far enough past his influences —'60s rock as epitomized by the Byrds, Beatles and Dylan, along with many lesser others —to leave the music scene different from how he found it. It’s hard to imagine rock music today would be any different had Petty never come along, apart from the obvious absence of the songs he wrote and played. I think it’s significant that at least two essays I read after his death cited his greatest hits comp as his best album.
This kind of thing is natural enough when someone dies and is pretty harmless in the end. If Petty was musical comfort food in the end, there’s nothing ignoble about that. I reached the point a while ago of ceasing to look forward to new Tom Petty music, but I like some of his stuff quite a bit and I was saddened by his death.
I’m with the OP. Never really liked Petty’s music much, other than a couple of songs he did with the Traveling Wilburys. And “I Won’t Back Down” and “Free Fallin’” actively annoy me.
