My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

booming map posts btw

I like the Johnny Cash cover

Love Is A Long Road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AilA-M6N5U

this one got a major boost from its inclusion in the first trailer for grand theft auto vi last year. now one of his top 5 on spotify.

this is one where lynne’s production really works for me

ha, I wondered why Spotify had it so high.

Solid album track IMHO, very much playing to Petty's strengths --- I feel like it could have easily shown up on Hard Promises. Maybe it's the searing guitar lines, or the "loooooooove" vocals (which take me back to "A Woman in Love"). Or, in terms of general early-80s vibes, the way that opening riff sounds quite a bit like Billy's "All For Leyna." And there's just a pinch of Petty's old strangled delivery ("to try and save my soul!"), appropriately used to convey the desperation described in the lyric. Happy to see him using this project to get back in touch with his home base, even while he tries on a fresh 90s sound elsewhere.

sort of late who-esque? very classic rock. something about the synth and the steady bpm.

it really does just remind me of "a woman in love". not in a bad way. but that's the first thing i think of when i hear it.

A Face In The Crowd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_umeMtV4QU

so what you're saying is: this album rules.

i can still hear this song in Walgreens and i'm okay with that. its a good song.

seriously though Runnin' is next which makes this 5 really good songs in a row.

Out in the streets
Thinking aloud

I’m all about that simple 3 note guitar part in the chorus

yeah side 1 of this album whips

I don't love either of the last two, they're fine but feel more like sketches. But that's also how I feel about a lot of the album, obviously the legions who made it his best-selling record didn't see it that way.

nice warm 12-string bath at 2:10.

That three-note hook is creepily hypnotic. Sinister.

god i love petty when he's sad and galaxy brained. this one reminds me of "it's good to be king" on wildflowers. so morose.

jeez "Love Is A Long Road" is more of a Tom Petty ripoff than that Sam Smith song! I feel like someone should have pulled him aside regarding that chorus.

so far this first side reminds me of this space i've been in where i'm years-deep into a relationship and things are getting hard and confusing and really real and i'm doing a lot of self-excavating and ending up in these places where i'm asking myself "what's the point", going deep in the deep end and holding my breath too much. also maybe depressed. i haven't been good about keeping up with this thread so i wonder if there were traces of his depression in the music before this album.

but god he made some glorious and brilliant 'i'm actually depressed' songs. my favorite tom mode. wildflowers has some great ones. i was thinking i can't wait until we get to that one because i'm actually familiar with it. one thing about wildflowers though is he's really weird about women on it. like he can't help turning into his dad or something.

god i love petty when he's sad and galaxy brained. this one reminds me of "it's good to be king" on wildflowers. so morose.

― he/him hoo-hah (map)

I had no idea -- I can hear the sonic connection.

booming posts, amp

*map

thanks :)

re: Depression in Petty's lyrics - I think "Straight into Darkness" fits the bill.

"Face in the Crowd" - agreed about that three-note guitar figure. The Lynne signatur of a steady, brightly chugging drum track is a little distracting here. Something about this is a little too clean and "pro" for me. Oddly it almost makes me think of a deep cut on one of the last couple REM albums. It's an okay song though. I'm surprised to realize it doesn't close out Side A!

side one isn’t over until you hear “hello cd listeners…”

Runnin' Down A Dream

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1D3a5eDJIs

great driving song, nice fast pace -- there'd better not be any traffic when this one comes on. focused lyrics. some actual interaction between the solo guitar and the drums. there's one point durint the (excellent) solo where i could swear he borrows a johnny thunders lick.

campbell’s best solo

is “runnin down a dream” the last-ever classic rock song? dont mean “modern” rock songs that get play on classic rock radio. feel like this is an endpoint for that entire era

unless it’s “mary jane’s last dance” haha, though that one has more in common with the adult alternative hits of its time

That riff is so basic and feels so primal that it's hard to believe nobody ever built a song around it before. (Or maybe they did, god knows there's plenty of blooz-rock I've never heard.) So good. And yeah, the solo is terrific. Petty is good here, nice vocal and the lyrics work, but Campbell is the star imo.

Plus as a Winsor McCay aficionado I like the video.

it's sort of the "dazed & confused" riff sped up.

"it's hard to believe nobody ever built a song around it before" is the Petty credo imo

yeah this one rocks. otm about the interaction between guitar and drums --- this is still very locked-down rhythmically, but absolutely conveys a band enjoying rockin' out with a rockin' riff, and it is absolutely perfect highway music. Petty's delivery is beautiful, too, especially on "The last three days, the rain was unstoppable." secretly the best hook of the song, next to that brilliantly focused little riff. i shudder to imagine a younger Petty squeezing that line out in Bobcat Dylanthwait mode.

"last classic rock" song is fascinating. looking at some of the year-end charts, I think the only competition might be "Mixed Emotions" and the Pump singles (all 1989) and maybe "Blaze of Glory," "Black Velvet" and "Hard to Handle" (1990), though I can no longer remember if classic rock stations used to play those. out of all of them, "Running Down a Dream" seems closest to the center of the format, and surely wins out on recurrent spins, ime. in any case, i've long felt Petty was definitely the last classic rock artist - I think this maybe got discussed in the run-up to the classic rock ballot poll.

have also long meant to start a thread asking what kind of "mystery" we think Tom Petty is "working on" in this song. it'd be good theme music for a juiced-up new Hardy Boys TV series, that's for sure.

love the strumming responses in the chorus. and yeah the outro solo is one of those transcendent ones that makes it seem like there are a billion chord changes or something… and such a feel.

As a kid I thought the lyric was “born wherever it leads”, like he was describing some cliche crime fiction thing

the strumming responses are sililar to "queen of hearts."

similar

i was very close once to making a playlist on youtube of live versions of this song because i kept searching for them. i just love that forward momentum so much. and every live solo is awesome. one live clip from 1991 and one from right before the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihzbaj-zoi0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnOOYrPkVYk

that last one the last time they would ever play it with tom.

I relate very much to these lyrics. There’s a real sadness to it. The dream here is anything better than what he’s currently doing, but he has no idea what that is. So he does what most American searchers do- he gets in his car and drives, hoping to find something more meaningful

"A Face in the Crowd" has always been a favorite, very haunting quality

i probably heard both songs at around the same time (back in the summer of '89), but I always associate "Face In The Crowd" with the Cure's "Lovesong"

totally get that

“face in the crowd” was kind of scary to me as a kid, it sounds like an endless chasm

yeah, as a kid it felt like a spooky outlier on the album, almost too real! the terror of limitless possibilities.

This ain't bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0AM2Dons5w