Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, in addition to being one of the great American rock and roll bands of the past third of a century, are one of the strongest arguments in popular music for the existence of greatest hits albums.\u00a0 For all of Petty\u2019s gifts as a songwriter, he has always been more prolific than consistent, and a better writer than editor of his own work.\u00a0 Once you get beyond those first three iconic LPs, it\u2019s just about impossible to review a Petty album without using the word \u201cfiller.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is why reviewing this disc is such a slam-dunk.\u00a0 It\u2019s all killer, no filler.\u00a0 Virtually every song here is just the right choice, it all flows beautifully, and the end result is one of the most impressive \u201cgreatest hits\u201d albums ever to wear that sometimes-checkered label.<\/p>\n
The first thing they do right on Greatest Hits<\/i> is stick to chronological run order, kicking off with the raw beauty of the anthemic \u201cAmerican Girl\u201d and the slinky menace of the immortal \u201cBreakdown\u201d before digging into the two best cuts from You\u2019re Gonna Get It!<\/i>, the gorgeous, jangly \u201cListen To Her Heart\u201d and the blistering, punkish \u201cI Need To Know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damn The Torpedoes<\/i> rates four tracks — as the group\u2019s breakthrough smash should — with hit singles \u201cRefugee,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t Do Me Like That\u201d and \u201cHere Comes My Girl\u201d augmented by the single most important album track of Petty\u2019s career.\u00a0 The memorable \u201cEven The Losers\u201d seems to sum up Petty\u2019s entire artistic persona in a single chorus: \u201cBaby, even the losers get lucky sometimes \/ Even the losers keep a little bit of pride.\u201d<\/p>\n
From there you get a sprinkling of highlights from Petty\u2019s relatively fallow 80s period — \u201cThe Waiting\u201d from Hard Promises<\/i>, \u201cYou Got Lucky\u201d from Long After Dark<\/i> and \u201cDon\u2019t Come Around Here No More\u201d from Southern Accents<\/i> — before digging into the trio of monster singles from his 1989 resurgence with Full Moon Fever<\/i>.\u00a0 \u201cI Won\u2019t Back Down,\u201d \u201cRunnin\u2019 Down A Dream\u201d and \u201cFree Fallin\u2019\u201d are so strong that you hardly notice that the two cuts from follow-up disc Into The Great Wide Open<\/i> show diminishing returns from Petty\u2019s musical partnership with fellow Traveling Wilbury (and ex-ELO frontman) Jeff Lynne.<\/p>\n
The two bonus cuts recorded for this album — representing Petty\u2019s first work with producer Rick Rubin — include the stinging, rather Stones-ey \u201cMary Jane\u2019s Last Dance\u201d and the Thunderclap Newman cover \u201cSomething In The Air.\u201d\u00a0 The latter is the album\u2019s only off note, a cover of a fluke hit single that many 70s bands seem besotted with, but that makes for a lukewarm and somewhat unsatisfying finish to what has up to that point been a stellar collection.\u00a0 (Note: the 2008 reissue of Greatest Hits<\/i> replaces \u201cSomething In The Air\u201d with the Stevie Nicks-TP & the Heartbreakers collaboration \u201cStop Draggin\u2019 My Heart Around\u201d — definitely an upgrade.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an album guy, which means hits collections tend to gather dust on my shelf.\u00a0 Not so with this one.\u00a0 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers\u2019 Greatest Hits<\/i> has been my highway companion on hundreds of roadtrips, and assuredly will be for hundreds more.\u00a0 Don\u2019t leave home without it\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":28229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6253],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41115","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41115"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}