“It’s Not About a Lot”: The Tom Petty Song He Thought People Took the Wrong Way

Once an artist releases a song into the world, they have little to no control over how listeners will perceive it, which is how Tom Petty ended up with a song that he said most people took the wrong way upon first hearing it. The track was the lead single from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ fifth studio album, Long After Dark. It was a successful single as far as chart performances go: “You Got Lucky” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart and a modest No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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Still, it wasn’t one of Petty’s favorites, so the band omitted the song from their live sets more often than not. In the early 2000s, Petty began incorporating the song into his concerts again, which guitarist Mike Campbell said the audience enjoyed. “The people really like it,” he said in an interview around that time. “It’s been sounding really fresh again. It’s got a lotta heart, that song.”

Campbell might have thought it had a lot of heart, but not everyone was so easily convinced. After Petty first released the track in October 1982, he quickly realized people were completely missing the sarcastic tone in his writing. The tone these listeners thought Petty was taking on was far darker and egotistical—the exact opposite of what the songwriter was going for at the time.

Why Tom Petty Said People Took This Song the Wrong Way

In “You Got Lucky”, Tom Petty sings to his partner about how “good love is hard to find.” The song’s refrain repeats the words, “You got lucky babe, you got lucky, babe, when I found you.” At face value, the song might sound like a narcissist suggesting that their partner couldn’t do any better than them if they tried. “You don’t feel complete if I don’t take you all of the way,” Petty sings. But according to the songwriter himself, that’s the exact opposite of what he was going for when he wrote the Long After Dark track.

In a 1986 interview with Musician, Petty called “You Got Lucky” the “most misunderstood song I ever wrote. That’s a very insecure person saying that. But it’s a real emotion. I found it amusing to sing that. But some people said, ‘God! The audacity!’ That’s a real insecure character. Insecure people say things like that to protect themselves.”

After nearly two decades of avoiding putting “You Got Lucky” in their live shows, Tom Petty offered an explanation for why he began incorporating the track in their concerts again. “It’s not about a lot,” he admitted. “It’s just kind of a love song. But it doesn’t have to be about a lot to be good. ‘Tutti Frutti’ is not about a lot, but I like it. You know what that song is? It’s a perfect little single. When I hear it on the radio, I think, ‘Wow, we really just filled every little space in the right way.’”

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