Above All Others: Tom Petty's Influence on Today's Americana
Try this exercise: who is the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll band of all time?
You’d be surprised how many music fans instinctively answer, “Beatles! Stones! Zeppelin!” Then when they collect themselves, and realize those are all British bands, they have to stop and think...wow, who is the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll band of all time?
And if you are of the camp who thinks it must be a singular “band” (a la the Beach Boys, Creedence, the Doors, Eagles, Aerosmith), and cannot be “so-and-so and the so-and-so’s”...well, that makes the exercise that much more difficult. Because let’s face it: the only real debate—once you’ve correctly decided that “so-and-so and the so-and-so’s” bands are fair game—is whether the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll band of all time is Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
(Hint: Sorry Boss fans, but the answer is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.)
Let’s keep it real from the jump: first and foremost, Tom Petty was a rock star. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were a rock band. The rock-rich artistic throughline can be traced pretty consistently throughout Petty’s catalog. He loved country and revered Hank Williams and Willie Nelson. He adored folk music and worshiped Woody Guthrie and, of course, his Traveling Wilburys bandmate Bob Dylan. But the bulk of Petty’s influences leaned toward the rockin’, from rockabilly-era Elvis, to the country-rock of the Byrds and Roy Orbison (also a Wilburys comrade), to the perfect pop-rock of the Beatles.
The more distance we gain from Petty’s 2017 passing, however, the more it becomes clear that being a rock star was but a tiny piece of his legacy. His music was truly inspirational, and not just to rockers. His influence permeates all the rock, country, and folk subgenres that so many young singer-songwriters and bands gravitate toward today: alternative country, outlaw country, country-rock, country-folk, indie-folk, alternative folk, heartland rock, roots rock, Southern rock—pretty much any roots-oriented musical movement that prioritizes glorious melodies, straightforward arrangements, and poignant lyrics about something or someone, real or imagined. And that little something about someone ends up meaning a great deal to most everyone.
“Americana” is the umbrella term used for rootsy music in the 21st century, and while it rubs some the wrong way when, say, psych-country pop singer Kacey Musgraves and Southern rockers Blackberry Smoke occasionally share the same genre description, the bottom line is that neither of them would quarrel over whether Tom Petty has had some effect on their artistry. Who wouldn’t want to associate their music with Tom Petty’s?
So here’s another exercise: let’s take a popular song from a modern-day Americana artist and see if we can identify a songwriting technique, or an element within the song structure, or just some overarching aspect of the song and/or artist that is a nod to the kind of craftsmanship Petty put forth, on either his solo albums or his records with the Heartbreakers. And then we’ll review a Petty classic and compare and contrast. (You can find most of the forthcoming Petty songs on the Rediscover Tom Petty Amazon Music playlist.)
These Americana artists aren’t necessarily direct disciples of Mr. Petty, the Pride of Gainesville, Florida. Nor will their songs, highlighted below, be exact mirror images of Petty compositions. Heck, maybe a few of these chosen Americana artists wouldn’t even think to outwardly list Tom Petty as being of any significant influence. This is just an exercise. It’s just for fun.
With that said, though, it’s hard to escape that just about every artist classified as “Americana” these days employs some kind of technique or trait perfected and exemplified by Tom Petty—as well as by his classic lineups of Heartbreakers (guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Stan Lynch, and bassists Ron Blair and Howie Epstein). The inspiration’s there, whether they’re conscious of it or not.
The Pettyism: Hammering home the same chord progression for the entire song, thus making room for the most magnificent of earworm melodies.
The Americana Song: Aaron Lee Tasjan’s “Up All Night,” from the 2021 New West Records release Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!
The Masterclass: “Learning to Fly,” from Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1991 LP Into the Great Wide Open.
Glammy Nashville folk-rocker Aaron Lee Tasjan rolled into Music City in the mid-2010s to do his own thing after distinguished stints in Drivin N Cryin, the New York Dolls, and his own New York City band, Semi Precious Weapons. A few EPs and two critically revered full-lengths, In the Blazes and Silver Tears, preceded Tasjan!, which Rolling Stone called “a tour-de-force” and his most compelling album to date.
First single “Up All Night” is nowhere near boring simply because it utilizes the same chords from beginning to end. Why? Because Tasjan conjures up a sardonic shoulder-shrug attitude with his lyrics and a dreamy atmosphere with his sound that’s so infectious as to completely overshadow any repetition one might notice.
“Learning to Fly” does the exact same thing. Who but the wiliest of music snobs would ever even notice the chords do the same thing throughout? Also like “Learning,” “Up All Night” (and much of the rest of Tasjan!) makes use of extremely Jeff Lynne-like production, and incorporates pregnant pauses between short-and-to-the-point verse lines. Compare:
Tasjan:
Broke up with my boyfriend [one measure of vocal pause]
To go out with my girlfriend [one measure of vocal pause]
‘Cause love is like, love is like, love is like that...
Petty:
Well I started out [one measure of vocal pause]
Down a dirty road [one measure of vocal pause]
Started out [one measure of vocal pause]
All alone [one measure of vocal pause]
The Pettyism: Standalone vocal tone.
The Americana Song: “Brothers” by The War on Drugs, from sophomore full-length album Slave Ambient (2011, Secretly Canadian).
The Masterclass: “Yer So Bad,” the final single off Petty’s wildly successful 1989 solo album, Full Moon Fever.
Some music aficionados get a little perplexed when Adam Granduciel’s the War on Drugs are classified as Americana or heartland rock. To many, they are a trippy, psychedelic shoegaze band that have nothing to do with countrified folk-rock. Repeated listens, though, to albums like their breakthrough, 2014’s Lost in the Dream, or the “Best Rock Album” Grammy-winning A Deeper Understanding, reveal a depth and perspective worthy of the moniker.
The Petty comparison especially kicks in when folks hear the sound of Granduciel’s voice. When they hear that slightly nasally tone, and how the singer-songwriter emphasizes key words by scooping up and down to the notes, Petty’s idiosyncratic vocal approach quickly comes to mind.
But Petty nicked that roller-coaster tonal affectation from one of his own heroes, Bob Dylan. And that’s who Granduciel truly takes after vocally, especially on later offerings such as “Living Proof,” the tranquil first single from 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore. If you go back to Slave Ambient-era TWOD, though, the vocals are more present, less breathy—and thus a touch more Petty-like.
The Pettyism: Unassailable authenticity.
The Americana Song: “Right on Time” by Brandi Carlile, from 2021’s In These Silent Days (Low Country Sound/Elektra Records).
The Masterclass: Take your pick from the Rediscover Tom Petty playlist. Any of those 40 songs sound like he’s calling it in? Didn’t think so. (Okay, okay, maybe “Zombie Zoo”...)
Serious question: is there any artist in popular music who is more universally beloved than Tom Petty? One could argue Paul McCartney, but (crazy as it sounds) there are those who say Macca’s music--Beatles, Wings, solo—just doesn’t do it for them. Who doesn’t at least like a handful of Petty songs, though? And amongst finicky musicians’ debate circles, Tom Petty is famously the one artist everyone can usually agree on loving, and they often collectively admit emulating him as well.
Of course, the songs are the number one reason for all the love. And to earn that love, the music not only has to be spectacular—the evocative lyrics, the world-beating choruses, the impossibly catchy melodies, the triumphant guitar chords ringing out—but the sentiment behind the music, that which emanates from the artist, has to be authentic for it to truly become timeless.
Maybe Brandi Carlile isn’t quite as universally beloved as Petty, but if Petty’s public approval rating is 99.9 percent, Carlile has to punch in at around the 95-98 percentile range, doesn’t she? And while, like with Mr. Petty, you can pluck any song from Carlile’s catalog and sense the same aura of genuineness, “Right on Time,” which kicks off In These Silent Days, is as good an example of authentic artistry as you can get.
Carlile’s vocal histrionics are the song’s highest highlight. In lesser hands (or vocal cords?), one might think there’s a bit of showing off going on. Does the song really need to pause to allow her to punctuate the urgent ascending melody with such a dramatic, opera-caliber “Riiiiiiiight?“
If the listener believes it’s an authentic expression of real emotion, then, yes, it’s necessary. And we do, so it is.
The Pettyism: Make the song title a repeating phrase that’s so powerfully sung and so affecting as to operate as an important musical device as much as a lyric adding to the narrative.
The Americana Song: “Black Myself” by Amythyst Kiah, from the 2021 Rounder Records album Wary + Strange.
The Masterclass: “Breakdown,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ very first single from their 1976 self-titled debut album.
Petty takes his own sweet time getting to the chorus of “Breakdown,” breaking the rule he would often follow later in his career of "not boring us and getting to the chorus,” so to speak. But then there’s that lull after the second half of the first verse, which is punctuated with a suddenly urgent “BAY-bayyyy,” and things get really intense, really quick.
When you fully examine the chorus lyrics, it does appear that this is just young Tom telling a would-be girlfriend to let down her defenses and give him a smooch (or maybe even more than a smooch). So it’s not so much that Petty insistently repeating “breakdown” as if it were a Buddhist mantra is all that profound lyrically. But it is profound musically, and in terms of songwriting technique.
Every line of chorus starts off with Petty imploring his muse to break down and give in. After the second line, the background vocals emphasize that point, too, with a long, ethereal re-utterance of the word. Just reading the lyrics as poetry, without the benefit of their accompanying score, a reader might think it’s all a bit much. Perhaps the resilience Petty shows for that word is overkill. But as a musical device, it’s an essential knockout punch of emotion.
The genre most often used to describe Amythyst Kiah’s music happens to be “folk,” but she prefers a term she coined herself, “Southern Gothic.” And despite “Black Myself” winning Song of the Year honors at the International Folk Music Awards, as well as being nominated for a Best American Roots Song Grammy, something a little darker like “gothic” feels like a more accurate description for “Black Myself.”
Kiah doesn’t bother to wait till the chorus to start using the phrase to make her point:
I wanna jump the fence and wash my face in the creek
But I'm black myself
I wanna sweep that gal right off her feet
But I'm black myself
I'm tired of walkin' 'round with no shoes on
'Cause I'm black myself
And your precious god ain't gonna bless me
'Cause I'm black myself
Instead of beginning each line with the key power-phrase, she ends each line with it, and it’s just as powerful. Maybe even more so. The first verse imagines a slave’s struggle, the second that of a freed, but still very much oppressed Black musician. Then the broken-down third verse is all about Kiah, announcing she’ll hold herself back no more: “I don't creep around, I stand proud and free—’cause I’m black myself.”
For a stripped-down, but just as haunting version of the song, seek out Kiah’s collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla as Our Native Daughters. It kicks off the incredibly moving 2019 Smithsonian Folkways-released album Songs of Our Native Daughters.
The Pettyism: Savvy use of dynamics (specifically, setting up a rousing chorus with a subdued verse).
The Americana Song: “Running with Our Eyes Closed” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, from the 2020 Reunions LP.
The Masterclass: “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” the very first single Stevie Nicks released as a solo artist. Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell wrote the song and performed on it.
“Running with Our Eyes Closed” starts off more like “Even the Losers” from the 1979 breakthrough TP&TH release Damn the Torpedoes. It begins with 400 Unit drummer Chad Gamble casually laying down a drumbeat before pausing to let the real intro kick in. Likewise, Heartbreaker Stan Lynch lays into some aggressive drum fills at the beginning of “Losers,” but then begs off to make way for the familiar guitar chimes of the tune’s intro.
Isbell has mentioned he’d been listening to a lot of Dire Straits as he was writing Reunions, and the dreamy blues lines that open “Running” prove it—the intro is very Mark Knopfler, in both atmospherics and style. When the vocal arrives, it’s wistful, talking about fragile trust and the confusion love can bring.
We’re given two delicate stanzas, and then the mood suddenly, but not too abruptly, shifts. Guitarist Sadler Vaden digs into an explosive power chord that provides a bed of electricity for a chorus consisting lyrically of just the song title. Isbell sings it aggressively, but somehow tenderly at the same time. And that first chorus is just two lines through of “Running with our eyes closed.” Then everything dies back down and we’re left exhilarated and wanting more of that energy when chorus number two comes around. Which we get.
But that intensity only happens in the chorus. Often the idea with a bridge (a completely unique third part of a song that usually comes after the second chorus) is to make it the best and most attention-grabbing part of the song. But here Isbell makes it tender and lets it simmer and build into a last dramatic chorus. And then the outro is like the intro, airy and understated, reminiscent of the mid-’80s Dire Straits hit “So Far Away.”
As for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” there’s some variation in its structure when it gets to the middle section, which is really just a simple instrumental guided by the rhythm section. No big guitar solo, and no proper bridge that incorporates a whole new stanza of lyrics with a new melody line introduced. But both songs similarly rely on dynamics. Each song’s agenda called for the same tactic: limit the parts that aren’t the chorus to a low-key smoldering groove so the chorus makes folks’ eyes pop out when it finally makes its impassioned entrance.
The Pettyism: Pure, unfettered, glorious simplicity.
The Americana Song: “Caught Like a Fire” by Andrew Leahey & the Homestead, from the 2022 full-length album American Static, Vol. 2.
The Masterclass: “I Won’t Back Down,” from Full Moon Fever.
There are plenty more songs of Petty’s that could be singled out for their simplicity, of course. After all, that was one of his favorite lessons to pass along when reporters would ask about his approach to songwriting. Paraphrased, the lesson was: “Keep it simple, stupid.”
For instance, don’t throw in wacky chords just because they sound weird and cool and keep you from getting bored. You want your music to be for everyone. That wacky chord hasn’t made its way into many hit songs for a reason: it sounds awful! (This is another Petty paraphrasing.)
No one within the Americana landscape keeps it simple yet smart like Andrew Leahey. He is the embodiment of “heartland rocker,” which is fine with him—he has no qualms about the comparisons he gets to Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, taking the outlook that if you’re going to get comparisons, they may as well be comparisons to the best.
“Caught Like a Fire” is not structured exactly like “I Won’t Back Down,” but it takes the same straightforward approach of driving home a fist-in-the-air rock ‘n’ roll song with supremely accessible melodies, music, and lyrical sentiment.
Each track gets right to it, offering up just four quick bars of guitar before the first verse. Lyrically, the song title factors into each verse as well, establishing the theme of each tune right away.
Each verse has two stanzas. The drumbeats don’t evoke the same groove, but they are both utterly simple by careful design: “Caught Like a Fire” employs little more than kick and snare in the verse and then is four-on-the-floor Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! for the chorus; meanwhile, “I Won’t Back Down” maintains its steady booka DOCK-a, booka DOCK-a, booka DOCK-a, booka DOCK-a beat throughout the whole song, even when the chorus uplifts in joyous exaltation.
Many deified songwriters have alluded to it many times: it’s not easy to write a simple song, and likewise, it’s pretty easy to write a complicated song if you really want to. But the only listeners who are going to respond to tricky-for-tricky’s-sake compositions are the people just like you who have acquired the taste for tricky tunes. The rest of your potential listening audience just wants to be moved, and the vast majority of music fans are moved by beautiful melodies and relatable stories, period.
The best songwriters don’t opt to write simple songs because they think they need to hold the listener’s hand, as if they’re incapable of comprehending complex music. It’s more like they’re putting their arm around the listener’s shoulder, making a connection, and taking pains not to overthink the emotional ties that bind us.
The Pettyism: Employing an engaging, heartfelt, relatable, and often unmistakably American lyrical narrative.
The Americana Song: “Sound of the South,” the debut single from super-duo Tim Jones (Truth & Salvage Co., Old Pike) and go-to Nashville multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Leroy Powell, collectively known as Whiskey Wolves of the West.
The Masterclasses: “American Girl,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” and “Into the Great Wide Open” for starters...
Petty wrote lyrics in the first person as much as he wrote about third-person colorful characters he half dreamt up and half based on his own experience. And that’s “Sound of the South.” Indiana native Jones and former Californian Powell didn’t grow up in the South, but they’ve spent much of their lives touring down that way. And as Powell sings in the bridge, they were born and raised on the music Southern artists played.
So the opening lines are their educated guess as to what a typical Saturday night might have been like for a kid from a poor working-class family of music-lovers:
There's a railroad boot tapping time to the beat of a stand-up bass
Daddy's voice was shaking
Sweat dripping all down his face
I thought the party'd be over when he threw his bottle at the wall
Till he picked up the broken pieces
To play the slide guitar
That's the sound of the South
Conjuring up that kind of evocative imagery about what may not be real people, but what certainly feels like real people, is the not-so-secret sauce of Tom Petty’s most enduring classics. He told endearing stories in those songs, stories that were actually about someone. Sometimes it was about him, or maybe it was about an unnamed American girl wanting more out of life. Or the elusive and achingly desirable Mary Jane, who doubles as a metaphor for the American Dream. Or Eddie the would-be rock star, soaking up the spoils of on-the-cusp stardom right before his predictable crash-and-burn.
They’re all characters we know well by now, ensuring the immortality of Petty’s legacy, and the legacy of his Heartbreakers as well.
Try this exercise: who is the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll band of all time?
You’d be surprised how many music fans instinctively answer, “Beatles! Stones! Zeppelin!” Then when they collect themselves, and realize those are all British bands, they have to stop and think...wow, who is the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll band of all time?
And if you are of the camp who thinks it must be a singular “band” (a la the Beach Boys, Creedence, the Doors, Eagles, Aerosmith), and cannot be “so-and-so and the so-and-so’s”...well, that makes the exercise that much more difficult. Because let’s face it: the only real debate—once you’ve correctly decided that “so-and-so and the so-and-so’s” bands are fair game—is whether the greatest American rock ‘n’ roll band of all time is Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
(Hint: Sorry Boss fans, but the answer is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.)
Let’s keep it real from the jump: first and foremost, Tom Petty was a rock star. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were a rock band. The rock-rich artistic throughline can be traced pretty consistently throughout Petty’s catalog. He loved country and revered Hank Williams and Willie Nelson. He adored folk music and worshiped Woody Guthrie and, of course, his Traveling Wilburys bandmate Bob Dylan. But the bulk of Petty’s influences leaned toward the rockin’, from rockabilly-era Elvis, to the country-rock of the Byrds and Roy Orbison (also a Wilburys comrade), to the perfect pop-rock of the Beatles.
The more distance we gain from Petty’s 2017 passing, however, the more it becomes clear that being a rock star was but a tiny piece of his legacy. His music was truly inspirational, and not just to rockers. His influence permeates all the rock, country, and folk subgenres that so many young singer-songwriters and bands gravitate toward today: alternative country, outlaw country, country-rock, country-folk, indie-folk, alternative folk, heartland rock, roots rock, Southern rock—pretty much any roots-oriented musical movement that prioritizes glorious melodies, straightforward arrangements, and poignant lyrics about something or someone, real or imagined. And that little something about someone ends up meaning a great deal to most everyone.
“Americana” is the umbrella term used for rootsy music in the 21st century, and while it rubs some the wrong way when, say, psych-country pop singer Kacey Musgraves and Southern rockers Blackberry Smoke occasionally share the same genre description, the bottom line is that neither of them would quarrel over whether Tom Petty has had some effect on their artistry. Who wouldn’t want to associate their music with Tom Petty’s?
So here’s another exercise: let’s take a popular song from a modern-day Americana artist and see if we can identify a songwriting technique, or an element within the song structure, or just some overarching aspect of the song and/or artist that is a nod to the kind of craftsmanship Petty put forth, on either his solo albums or his records with the Heartbreakers. And then we’ll review a Petty classic and compare and contrast. (You can find most of the forthcoming Petty songs on the Rediscover Tom Petty Amazon Music playlist.)
These Americana artists aren’t necessarily direct disciples of Mr. Petty, the Pride of Gainesville, Florida. Nor will their songs, highlighted below, be exact mirror images of Petty compositions. Heck, maybe a few of these chosen Americana artists wouldn’t even think to outwardly list Tom Petty as being of any significant influence. This is just an exercise. It’s just for fun.
With that said, though, it’s hard to escape that just about every artist classified as “Americana” these days employs some kind of technique or trait perfected and exemplified by Tom Petty—as well as by his classic lineups of Heartbreakers (guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Stan Lynch, and bassists Ron Blair and Howie Epstein). The inspiration’s there, whether they’re conscious of it or not.
The Pettyism: Hammering home the same chord progression for the entire song, thus making room for the most magnificent of earworm melodies.
The Americana Song: Aaron Lee Tasjan’s “Up All Night,” from the 2021 New West Records release Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!
The Masterclass: “Learning to Fly,” from Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1991 LP Into the Great Wide Open.
Glammy Nashville folk-rocker Aaron Lee Tasjan rolled into Music City in the mid-2010s to do his own thing after distinguished stints in Drivin N Cryin, the New York Dolls, and his own New York City band, Semi Precious Weapons. A few EPs and two critically revered full-lengths, In the Blazes and Silver Tears, preceded Tasjan!, which Rolling Stone called “a tour-de-force” and his most compelling album to date.
First single “Up All Night” is nowhere near boring simply because it utilizes the same chords from beginning to end. Why? Because Tasjan conjures up a sardonic shoulder-shrug attitude with his lyrics and a dreamy atmosphere with his sound that’s so infectious as to completely overshadow any repetition one might notice.
“Learning to Fly” does the exact same thing. Who but the wiliest of music snobs would ever even notice the chords do the same thing throughout? Also like “Learning,” “Up All Night” (and much of the rest of Tasjan!) makes use of extremely Jeff Lynne-like production, and incorporates pregnant pauses between short-and-to-the-point verse lines. Compare:
Tasjan:
Broke up with my boyfriend [one measure of vocal pause]
To go out with my girlfriend [one measure of vocal pause]
‘Cause love is like, love is like, love is like that...
Petty:
Well I started out [one measure of vocal pause]
Down a dirty road [one measure of vocal pause]
Started out [one measure of vocal pause]
All alone [one measure of vocal pause]
The Pettyism: Standalone vocal tone.
The Americana Song: “Brothers” by The War on Drugs, from sophomore full-length album Slave Ambient (2011, Secretly Canadian).
The Masterclass: “Yer So Bad,” the final single off Petty’s wildly successful 1989 solo album, Full Moon Fever.
Some music aficionados get a little perplexed when Adam Granduciel’s the War on Drugs are classified as Americana or heartland rock. To many, they are a trippy, psychedelic shoegaze band that have nothing to do with countrified folk-rock. Repeated listens, though, to albums like their breakthrough, 2014’s Lost in the Dream, or the “Best Rock Album” Grammy-winning A Deeper Understanding, reveal a depth and perspective worthy of the moniker.
The Petty comparison especially kicks in when folks hear the sound of Granduciel’s voice. When they hear that slightly nasally tone, and how the singer-songwriter emphasizes key words by scooping up and down to the notes, Petty’s idiosyncratic vocal approach quickly comes to mind.
But Petty nicked that roller-coaster tonal affectation from one of his own heroes, Bob Dylan. And that’s who Granduciel truly takes after vocally, especially on later offerings such as “Living Proof,” the tranquil first single from 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore. If you go back to Slave Ambient-era TWOD, though, the vocals are more present, less breathy—and thus a touch more Petty-like.
The Pettyism: Unassailable authenticity.
The Americana Song: “Right on Time” by Brandi Carlile, from 2021’s In These Silent Days (Low Country Sound/Elektra Records).
The Masterclass: Take your pick from the Rediscover Tom Petty playlist. Any of those 40 songs sound like he’s calling it in? Didn’t think so. (Okay, okay, maybe “Zombie Zoo”...)
Serious question: is there any artist in popular music who is more universally beloved than Tom Petty? One could argue Paul McCartney, but (crazy as it sounds) there are those who say Macca’s music--Beatles, Wings, solo—just doesn’t do it for them. Who doesn’t at least like a handful of Petty songs, though? And amongst finicky musicians’ debate circles, Tom Petty is famously the one artist everyone can usually agree on loving, and they often collectively admit emulating him as well.
Of course, the songs are the number one reason for all the love. And to earn that love, the music not only has to be spectacular—the evocative lyrics, the world-beating choruses, the impossibly catchy melodies, the triumphant guitar chords ringing out—but the sentiment behind the music, that which emanates from the artist, has to be authentic for it to truly become timeless.
Maybe Brandi Carlile isn’t quite as universally beloved as Petty, but if Petty’s public approval rating is 99.9 percent, Carlile has to punch in at around the 95-98 percentile range, doesn’t she? And while, like with Mr. Petty, you can pluck any song from Carlile’s catalog and sense the same aura of genuineness, “Right on Time,” which kicks off In These Silent Days, is as good an example of authentic artistry as you can get.
Carlile’s vocal histrionics are the song’s highest highlight. In lesser hands (or vocal cords?), one might think there’s a bit of showing off going on. Does the song really need to pause to allow her to punctuate the urgent ascending melody with such a dramatic, opera-caliber “Riiiiiiiight?“
If the listener believes it’s an authentic expression of real emotion, then, yes, it’s necessary. And we do, so it is.
The Pettyism: Make the song title a repeating phrase that’s so powerfully sung and so affecting as to operate as an important musical device as much as a lyric adding to the narrative.
The Americana Song: “Black Myself” by Amythyst Kiah, from the 2021 Rounder Records album Wary + Strange.
The Masterclass: “Breakdown,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ very first single from their 1976 self-titled debut album.
Petty takes his own sweet time getting to the chorus of “Breakdown,” breaking the rule he would often follow later in his career of "not boring us and getting to the chorus,” so to speak. But then there’s that lull after the second half of the first verse, which is punctuated with a suddenly urgent “BAY-bayyyy,” and things get really intense, really quick.
When you fully examine the chorus lyrics, it does appear that this is just young Tom telling a would-be girlfriend to let down her defenses and give him a smooch (or maybe even more than a smooch). So it’s not so much that Petty insistently repeating “breakdown” as if it were a Buddhist mantra is all that profound lyrically. But it is profound musically, and in terms of songwriting technique.
Every line of chorus starts off with Petty imploring his muse to break down and give in. After the second line, the background vocals emphasize that point, too, with a long, ethereal re-utterance of the word. Just reading the lyrics as poetry, without the benefit of their accompanying score, a reader might think it’s all a bit much. Perhaps the resilience Petty shows for that word is overkill. But as a musical device, it’s an essential knockout punch of emotion.
The genre most often used to describe Amythyst Kiah’s music happens to be “folk,” but she prefers a term she coined herself, “Southern Gothic.” And despite “Black Myself” winning Song of the Year honors at the International Folk Music Awards, as well as being nominated for a Best American Roots Song Grammy, something a little darker like “gothic” feels like a more accurate description for “Black Myself.”
Kiah doesn’t bother to wait till the chorus to start using the phrase to make her point:
I wanna jump the fence and wash my face in the creek
But I'm black myself
I wanna sweep that gal right off her feet
But I'm black myself
I'm tired of walkin' 'round with no shoes on
'Cause I'm black myself
And your precious god ain't gonna bless me
'Cause I'm black myself
Instead of beginning each line with the key power-phrase, she ends each line with it, and it’s just as powerful. Maybe even more so. The first verse imagines a slave’s struggle, the second that of a freed, but still very much oppressed Black musician. Then the broken-down third verse is all about Kiah, announcing she’ll hold herself back no more: “I don't creep around, I stand proud and free—’cause I’m black myself.”
For a stripped-down, but just as haunting version of the song, seek out Kiah’s collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla as Our Native Daughters. It kicks off the incredibly moving 2019 Smithsonian Folkways-released album Songs of Our Native Daughters.
The Pettyism: Savvy use of dynamics (specifically, setting up a rousing chorus with a subdued verse).
The Americana Song: “Running with Our Eyes Closed” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, from the 2020 Reunions LP.
The Masterclass: “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” the very first single Stevie Nicks released as a solo artist. Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell wrote the song and performed on it.
“Running with Our Eyes Closed” starts off more like “Even the Losers” from the 1979 breakthrough TP&TH release Damn the Torpedoes. It begins with 400 Unit drummer Chad Gamble casually laying down a drumbeat before pausing to let the real intro kick in. Likewise, Heartbreaker Stan Lynch lays into some aggressive drum fills at the beginning of “Losers,” but then begs off to make way for the familiar guitar chimes of the tune’s intro.
Isbell has mentioned he’d been listening to a lot of Dire Straits as he was writing Reunions, and the dreamy blues lines that open “Running” prove it—the intro is very Mark Knopfler, in both atmospherics and style. When the vocal arrives, it’s wistful, talking about fragile trust and the confusion love can bring.
We’re given two delicate stanzas, and then the mood suddenly, but not too abruptly, shifts. Guitarist Sadler Vaden digs into an explosive power chord that provides a bed of electricity for a chorus consisting lyrically of just the song title. Isbell sings it aggressively, but somehow tenderly at the same time. And that first chorus is just two lines through of “Running with our eyes closed.” Then everything dies back down and we’re left exhilarated and wanting more of that energy when chorus number two comes around. Which we get.
But that intensity only happens in the chorus. Often the idea with a bridge (a completely unique third part of a song that usually comes after the second chorus) is to make it the best and most attention-grabbing part of the song. But here Isbell makes it tender and lets it simmer and build into a last dramatic chorus. And then the outro is like the intro, airy and understated, reminiscent of the mid-’80s Dire Straits hit “So Far Away.”
As for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” there’s some variation in its structure when it gets to the middle section, which is really just a simple instrumental guided by the rhythm section. No big guitar solo, and no proper bridge that incorporates a whole new stanza of lyrics with a new melody line introduced. But both songs similarly rely on dynamics. Each song’s agenda called for the same tactic: limit the parts that aren’t the chorus to a low-key smoldering groove so the chorus makes folks’ eyes pop out when it finally makes its impassioned entrance.
The Pettyism: Pure, unfettered, glorious simplicity.
The Americana Song: “Caught Like a Fire” by Andrew Leahey & the Homestead, from the 2022 full-length album American Static, Vol. 2.
The Masterclass: “I Won’t Back Down,” from Full Moon Fever.
There are plenty more songs of Petty’s that could be singled out for their simplicity, of course. After all, that was one of his favorite lessons to pass along when reporters would ask about his approach to songwriting. Paraphrased, the lesson was: “Keep it simple, stupid.”
For instance, don’t throw in wacky chords just because they sound weird and cool and keep you from getting bored. You want your music to be for everyone. That wacky chord hasn’t made its way into many hit songs for a reason: it sounds awful! (This is another Petty paraphrasing.)
No one within the Americana landscape keeps it simple yet smart like Andrew Leahey. He is the embodiment of “heartland rocker,” which is fine with him—he has no qualms about the comparisons he gets to Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, taking the outlook that if you’re going to get comparisons, they may as well be comparisons to the best.
“Caught Like a Fire” is not structured exactly like “I Won’t Back Down,” but it takes the same straightforward approach of driving home a fist-in-the-air rock ‘n’ roll song with supremely accessible melodies, music, and lyrical sentiment.
Each track gets right to it, offering up just four quick bars of guitar before the first verse. Lyrically, the song title factors into each verse as well, establishing the theme of each tune right away.
Each verse has two stanzas. The drumbeats don’t evoke the same groove, but they are both utterly simple by careful design: “Caught Like a Fire” employs little more than kick and snare in the verse and then is four-on-the-floor Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! for the chorus; meanwhile, “I Won’t Back Down” maintains its steady booka DOCK-a, booka DOCK-a, booka DOCK-a, booka DOCK-a beat throughout the whole song, even when the chorus uplifts in joyous exaltation.
Many deified songwriters have alluded to it many times: it’s not easy to write a simple song, and likewise, it’s pretty easy to write a complicated song if you really want to. But the only listeners who are going to respond to tricky-for-tricky’s-sake compositions are the people just like you who have acquired the taste for tricky tunes. The rest of your potential listening audience just wants to be moved, and the vast majority of music fans are moved by beautiful melodies and relatable stories, period.
The best songwriters don’t opt to write simple songs because they think they need to hold the listener’s hand, as if they’re incapable of comprehending complex music. It’s more like they’re putting their arm around the listener’s shoulder, making a connection, and taking pains not to overthink the emotional ties that bind us.
The Pettyism: Employing an engaging, heartfelt, relatable, and often unmistakably American lyrical narrative.
The Americana Song: “Sound of the South,” the debut single from super-duo Tim Jones (Truth & Salvage Co., Old Pike) and go-to Nashville multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Leroy Powell, collectively known as Whiskey Wolves of the West.
The Masterclasses: “American Girl,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” and “Into the Great Wide Open” for starters...
Petty wrote lyrics in the first person as much as he wrote about third-person colorful characters he half dreamt up and half based on his own experience. And that’s “Sound of the South.” Indiana native Jones and former Californian Powell didn’t grow up in the South, but they’ve spent much of their lives touring down that way. And as Powell sings in the bridge, they were born and raised on the music Southern artists played.
So the opening lines are their educated guess as to what a typical Saturday night might have been like for a kid from a poor working-class family of music-lovers:
There's a railroad boot tapping time to the beat of a stand-up bass
Daddy's voice was shaking
Sweat dripping all down his face
I thought the party'd be over when he threw his bottle at the wall
Till he picked up the broken pieces
To play the slide guitar
That's the sound of the South
Conjuring up that kind of evocative imagery about what may not be real people, but what certainly feels like real people, is the not-so-secret sauce of Tom Petty’s most enduring classics. He told endearing stories in those songs, stories that were actually about someone. Sometimes it was about him, or maybe it was about an unnamed American girl wanting more out of life. Or the elusive and achingly desirable Mary Jane, who doubles as a metaphor for the American Dream. Or Eddie the would-be rock star, soaking up the spoils of on-the-cusp stardom right before his predictable crash-and-burn.
They’re all characters we know well by now, ensuring the immortality of Petty’s legacy, and the legacy of his Heartbreakers as well.