Songoftheday 8/16/19 - Let me run with you tonight I'll take you on a moonlight ride, there's someone I used to see but she don't give a damn for me...
from the album Wildflowers (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17
Today's song of the day comes from the late southern rock legend Tom Petty, who by the mid-1990's had been in a coasting period, releasing his first greatest hits album with both music billed "solo" and with the Heartbreakers. The collection even scored Tom and the Heartbreakers another top 20 pop hit as well as Petty's ninth total #1 Mainstream Rock radio single with "Mary Jane's Last Dance". Switching labels to Warner Bros (explaining the hits set), Petty started out his tenure with the company with Wildflowers, the second album billed as a solo set, even though almost all of the Heartbreakers save drummer Stan Lynch, who left the band in 1994 and at the time was drumming for the reunited Eagles. Hiring Rick Rubin to co-produce the set along with long-time guitarist Mike Campbell, Petty was possibly going for the more personal feel of his first "solo" set, Full Moon Fever from 1989, which landed him his most recent top ten pop hit with "Free Fallin'". The lead single from the record would be the sparse and sardonic "You Don't Know How It Feels". Written by the artist, the song wouldn't pull punches on his pessimistic look at the industry, along with drug references that had to be edited out for radio. Nevertheless it would give Tom his last "big" hit...
"You Don't Know How It Feels" became Petty's sixteenth and final top-40 pop hit in February of 1995. The song topped the Mainstream Rock radio chart in Billboard magazine for a week, while crossing over to their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list at #22. Internationally, the single peaked at #3 in Canada, while being a minor hit in the UK at #91. At the 1996 Grammy Awards, "You Don't Know How It Feels" won the trophy for Best Male Rock Vocal (his only music Grammy Award apart from the Traveling Wilburys), while the Wildflowers album was nominated for Best Rock Album, losing out to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill.
Tom's next single, "You Wreck Me", spent a week at #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, but didn't even place on the pop Hot 100 (though it made it to #8 in Canada, and did slightly better than the first in the UK, peaking at #88). That was followed by "It's Good To Be King", which placed at #68 on the American pop chart and #6 on the Mainstream Rock radio list, and also got to #8 in Canada. The final physical single from the record, "A Higher Place", went to #12 on the American rock radio chart and #5 on the big chart in Canada. Apart from these four, the album track "Cabin Down Below" got enough radio love to climb to #29 on the Mainstream Rock list. Later that year, Petty released a multi-disc "box set", including a new track, "Waiting For Tonight", which went to #6 on the Mainstream Rock tally.
In 1996, Petty and the Heartbreakers regrouped to record the soundtrack to the movie She's The One starring Jennifer Aniston. From it the single "Walls (Circus)" went to #6 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart (one of three tracks from the album to chart), #69 on their pop Hot 100, and #25 on the newly-minted "Adult Top-40" format list in America, while going as high as #2 in Canada. Three years later, the band came back with their third and final set with Rubin, Echo. From it "Free Girl Now" hit #5 on the rock radio chart, while "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #120.
The band returned in 2002 with The Last DJ, another sour-note set that got the title track up to #22 on the Mainstream Rock chart. In 2006, as Petty and the Heartbreakers were touring to celebrate their 30 years together, Petty released his third "solo"-billed album, Highway Companion. From the record "Saving Grace" slipped Tom on to the Hot 100 for the final time at #100, and got to #26 on the rock radio list. The band also played the half-time show of the Super Bowl in 2008. They started the next decade with a "pet" project, the blues-rock set Mojo, which placed "I Should Have Known It" to #40 on the Mainstream Rock tally.
In 2014, Petty and the Heartbreakers released what would be their last studio album together, Hypnotic Eye, with single "U Get Me High" reaching the top ten on the Triple-A rock list. The record would score them their only #1 studio album. The band kept touring until sadly Petty was found dead from overdose on October 2, 2017, also the day that the worst mass shooting to date outside the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas at a country concert happened.
Unreleased Petty music has come out since, with 1982 Long After Dark-era track "Keep A Little Soul" reaching the top ten on the Triple-A rock format chart. And just this year, "For Real" from 2000 climbed the same list.
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Here's Tom appearing live on the Late Show With David Letterman to promote the single...
Next up on SNL with Nirvana/Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl on drums...
Here they are on their concert video High Grass Dogs from 1999...
And again from I think was his Storytellers stint on VH1 in 1997...
And lastly, from 2017 on tour in Texas...
Up tomorrow: A Police-man shuffles his feet.
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