Tom Petty wrote so many brilliant songs at such a prolific pace that it made sense that others would want to piggyback on that talent. In one instance, that created a bit of an uptown problem for Petty. Petty’s 1981 song “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)” demonstrates his way with a lyric. It creates a striking character sketch of the titular female while also getting deep into the narrator’s heartbreak. It should have been a hit, but one of Petty’s other compositions just wouldn’t allow it.
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“Woman” Trouble
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released Hard Promises in 1981, two years after their massive smash LP Damn The Torpedoes. In many ways, it felt like a Volume 2 of the previous album, with Petty’s smart, piercing songs brought to vivid, rocking life by The Heartbreakers. Pop crossover opportunities seemed plentiful on the album.
“A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)” certainly seemed like a candidate to be a big hit. Mike Campbell came up with the basic chord structure, allowing Petty to write the words and the tune. The Heartbreakers hosted a special guest in bassist Duck Dunn, whose playing in the verses dances nimbly between Petty’s vocals.
Petty released “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)” as the second single off the album in June 1981, following up the Top 20 hit “The Waiting”. But just a week later, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, a duet between Petty and the Heartbreakers and Stevie Nicks that was written by Petty, arrived on the radio.
The latter song turned into a runaway hit, helping to establish Nicks as a solo artist away from Fleetwood Mac. But it also helped torpedo the chart chances of “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)”. Radio programmers weren’t keen on including two songs prominently featuring Petty on their playlists, and it failed to reach the Top 40.
Exploring the Lyrics of “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)”
Regardless of the lack of chart success, “A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)” finds Petty and his band at their very best. They brilliantly pull off the dynamics of quiet to loud and then back to quiet again. Petty speak-sings the verses before charging headlong into the chorus with his band alongside him.
The song opens with the girl bidding farewell to the narrator. She offers him cold consolation that seems to speak to her pessimistic outlook on life: “Said, ‘Don’t think about it, you can go crazy / Anything can happen, anything can end / Don’t try to fight it, don’t try to save me’.”
The narrator then remembers how she used to be before this change came upon her. “She used to be the kind of woman / To have and to hold.” That wording suggests that the couple had been married. “She could understand the problem / She let the little things go,” he sings. The past tense lets us know that such behavior is no longer the norm.
In the final verse, he recalls her looking to him for solace for her loneliness. But now that it’s over, he can only rue his entire surroundings. “I don’t understand the world today / I don’t understand what she needed / I gave her everything she threw it all away on nothin’,” he moans.
“She’s a woman in love / But it’s not me,” he admits in the chorus. We know that she’s moved on, making it worse for him.
“A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)” was scorned in a similar fashion to its sad-sack narrator. Its own creator, Tom Petty, partially did it in by having one too many fantastic songs on the market. What a problem to have.
Photo by Margaret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
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