At his core, Tom Petty wasn’t a frontman. He was a songwriter. Throughout his four-decade collaboration with the Heartbreakers, he wrote rock ‘n’ roll classics that turned simple ideas—love gained, love lost, the nostalgia of childhood, the promise of a brighter future—into larger-than-life anthems. His solo career scratched the same itch, showcasing Petty’s ability to distill everyday experiences into electrifying music, even without his bandmates sharing equal space on the marquee.
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Below, we’ve listed seven songs that highlight those songwriting abilities.
1. “Runnin’ Down a Dream”
“Runnin’ Down a Dream” is a song about the possibilities we make for ourselves, the horizons we drive toward, and the call of the open road. “That [song] was inspired, really, by driving,” Petty told Rockline on August 7, 1991. “In all those years, I’d never really written a car song or one about driving. I wanted to write one about someone driving or running away in a car.” After Mike Campbell’s legendary guitar riff cranks the ignition, “Runnin’ Down a Dream” unfolds like a road trip soundtrack, with lyrics that evoke the momentum of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and an explosive outro that’s built for the fast lane.
2. “Free Fallin'”
The opening riff to “Free Fallin'” isn’t actually a riff at all; it’s a chord progression that twists itself around the same F note. Petty’s lyrics share a similar center, with three verses about life in the San Fernando Valley that all give way to the chorus’ declaration to escape, to become airborne, to “leave this world for awhile.” The storytelling is simple, the hooks are direct, and the chorus creates its own call-and-response thanks to a delayed effect on Petty’s vocals. An unabashed pop song that utilizes no more than three chords, “Free Fallin'” is an example of Petty’s songwriting at its most efficient.
3. “Down South”
Although he left Florida and moved to Southern California during the mid-1970s, Petty never forgot about his years spent in the Bible Belt. He explored the area’s complicated past and present on Southern Accents, then returned to it with “Down South,” a deep cut from the 2006 release Highway Companion. The lyrics are fantastic, with Petty—playing the character of a prodigal son who’s decided to come home—promising to create myself down south, impress all the women, pretend I’m Samuel Clemens, wear seersucker and white linens. Lighter than the emotionally weighty Southern Accents, “Down South” finds latter-day Petty in fine form, prioritizing internal rhyme and clever turns of phrase.
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4. “Room at the Top”
“Room at the Top” was written on the piano following Petty’s divorce from his first wife. The heartbreaking song finds him looking to disengage—or maybe just rise above—a hurtful world that’s hellbent on bringing him down. Petty deemed the song so depressing that he never played it live after 1999, the same year it appeared on the Heartbreakers’ Echo. Even so, “Room at the Top” lives on as an illustration of Petty’s music at its most pained and poignant.
5. “Into the Great Wide Open”
Even without the iconic music video starring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway, “Into the Great Wide Open” looms large as a cinematic highlight from Petty’s catalog. The storyline of a high school graduate who moves to California, lands a record deal, and becomes hypnotized by L.A.’s seedy underbelly could’ve doubled as a Hollywood script, and Petty purposely left the ending open to interpretation. When we last hear from Eddie, the song’s protagonist, he’s just been told by an A&R rep that his new album lacks a single. Does he get dropped from his label? Does he head back home, his tail tucked between his legs? Does he triumph or fail? We’ll never know, but we’re left with a killer song—the soundtrack to a movie that never was.
6. “Even the Losers”
Ah, youth. It’s the stuff classic rock songs are made of. It was nearly summer, we sat out on the roof; we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon, Petty sings, balancing the sky-blue chimes of Mike Campbell’s guitar with the swirl of nostalgia. Like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, “Even the Losers” requires a bit of interaction from its audience. The song could be a bittersweet look backward from someone pining for the glory days of childhood, or it could be an optimistic tribute to love’s (and life’s) possibilities. The interpretation depends on who’s listening.
7. “Insider”
Tom Petty recorded two duets with Stevie Nicks during the early 1980s, with the more popular song, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” reaching No. 3 on the Hot 100. “Insider” wasn’t even released as a single, but its exploration of aching, unrequited love makes it one of Petty’s best deep cuts. The final verse is heartbreakingly sad, with Petty watching from a distance as a lesser man wins the hand of Petty’s girl. “I’ll bet you’re his masterpiece, I’ll bet you’re his self-control; yeah, you’ll become his legacy, his quiet world of white and gold,” he laments. Tom and Stevie don’t sing the song’s verses separately, like they do in “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” Instead, they pile their voices together, harmonizing every word and heightening the drama. Petty wrote about love in countless songs, but perhaps never as compellingly as he does here.
Photo by Robert Sebree
