Songoftheday 12/13/17 - Well I started out down a dirty road started out all alone, And the sun went down as I crossed the hill...

"Learning To Fly" - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
from the album Into The Great Wide Open (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's song of the day is from the late rock icon Tom Petty, whose first solo album Full Moon Fever had landed him a trio of top forty pop hits with "I Won't Back Down", "Runnin' Down A Dream", and his top ten classic "Free Falling". (A fourth single, "A Face In The Crowd", almost made the top-40 as well, peaking at #46, while a fifth release, "Yer So Bad", stopped at #80; both reached #5 on the Mainstream Rock radio list in Billboard.) At the start of the new decade, Petty rounded up his longtime backing band the Heartbreakers for their next album, Into The Great Wide Open. The first single from the record, "Learning To Fly", was a breezy yet sardonic piece that placed him back on rock radio; in fact the song was his biggest hit at the format...

"Learning To Fly" reached the pop top 40 in America in August of 1991. The single spent six weeks at #1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, while it crossed over to #36 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio format, his first placing with the Heartbreakers. The song was nominated for a Grammy award for best Rock Song in 1992, losing out to Sting's "The Soul Cages". Internationally, the record peaked at #5 in Canada, made the top-40 in New Zealand (#28) and Germany (#31, his sole top-40 hit there), and just missed the top-40 in the UK at #46.

The title track, "Into The Great Wide Open", was released as the second single, and while it went to #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart, it stalled down at #92 on the Pop Hot 100. The music video featured Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway. Before that, fast-paced album track "Out In The Cold" spent two weeks at #1 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart in September. Two more cuts from the set reached that list - "Kings Highway" (#4) and "Makin' Some Noise" (#30). In the UK, another song, "Too Good To Be True", was put out as a single and reached #34, one of his only three top-40 hits in Britain.

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Here's the band playing live at the Bridge Concert benefit in 1994...