214. Tom Petty, "Wildflowers"



I've been thinking about this for a while and I think I've figured out the Tom Petty Problem, which is actually probably two problems.  Problem (1) is that his songs are so tightly engrained into post-60's American culture that it's hard to determine whether they are actually good songs, or just songs that you know so well they're like a warm blanket, and the related Problem (2) is that Tom Petty wrote so many above average songs that it's hard to determine whether they are actually good songs, or just very competent.  The man got so good at writing songs that he could probably toss off a few in the morning just for fun then have breakfast.  Great story: producer Rick Rubin "recalled Petty playing him a tape of demos, interrupting to pick up his guitar and write an entirely new song on the spot, inspired by hearing his own words played back at him."

So this album is a great test case for these problems, because I have never heard it before - not a single song, I swear to God, not a word of a lie - and so I am in the rare position of being exposed to an album worth of Tom Petty songs that are all brand new to me.

The results are in: It's good to very good, with some bright spots and some filler.  Petty originally wanted this to be a 25-song double album, which makes sense when you know about his wild prolificity in songwriting.  That seems like it would have been too much.  The songs that are left all feel intimate, personal to the singer, instead of the tales of wild wanderers that had populated his earlier albums.  By all accounts, Petty was in the midst of blowing up his life when the album was recorded, ending his marriage, firing his longtime drummer, and on the cusp of a heroin addiction.  And it feels restless and immediate.

The first single was "You Don't Know How It Feels," a bluesy/countryish stomp with a big snare sound that drives it and drug-related lyrics ("So let's get to the point/let's roll another joint") that caused problems since it was 1994.  (The b-side was "Girl on LSD," which is about all kinds of girls on all kinds of drugs and which they wouldn't let him put on the album.)  "You Wreck Me" is pure Petty rock, that fast American style he did so well that just sounds like it should be coming out of a Chevy on a numbered highway somewhere in the country.  There are two residence-related songs, "Cabin Down Below," a frank invitation to sneak away, one assumes, not for an enjoyable game of chess; and "House in the Woods," a declaration of love, quite the opposite of the guy who's taking someone to the cabin down below.  I liked "Cabin" more, maybe because "House" just sounds kinda whiny or something.

"It's Good to Be King" was also a single, a midtempo song that reminded me of Pink Floyd for some reason, a kind of dirge about how nice it would be to be on top of the world which, of course, Tom Petty was.  That's the irony in a lot of this album; a lot of it is bemoaning the singer's lot in life, when he's one of the most successful recording artists ever.

Anyway, the songs all seem good, but nothing stuck with me.  I didn't walk away humming anything in my head.  I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll meet, Mr. Petty.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? I mean, I don't think so, but I'm willing to entertain arguments why I'm wrong.

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