The thing about Tom Petty is, even when he was bad, he was still pretty good. <\/p>\n
Others have called<\/a> The Last DJ<\/i> the weakest link in Petty\u2019s substantial catalogue, and to be sure, this 2002 release contains both some filler and one or two outright clunkers, an album of struggle that came into being at a critical crossroads for the band, as longtime Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein was in the midst of his final, fatal dance with addiction. <\/p>\n But let\u2019s begin by dispelling the number one misconception about The Last DJ<\/i>: it\u2019s not an album-long diatribe against the corruption of the music industry by corporate interests. It\u2019s a four-song-long diatribe against the corruption of the music industry by corporate interests (the title track, \u201cMoney Becomes King,\u201d \u201cJoe,\u201d and \u201cCan\u2019t Stop The Sun\u201d), with eight other tunes of varying subject matter and quality set inside that thin frame. Granted, the aforesaid four songs wear out their welcome quickly with their bile-driven, sledgehammer approach to the subject matter, but Petty wasn\u2019t wrong; corporate interests did take over, driving free-form radio off the public dial. <\/p>\n Inevitably, though, The Last DJ<\/i>\u2019s dominant tone has a certain cranky-neighbor \u201cget off my lawn\u201d vibe, railing at changes that had been developing for decades, at least as long as Petty had been active, and that by 2002 felt uncontestable; Petty might as well have stood at the ocean\u2019s edge railing at the tide. However regrettable the changes in the industry, it wasn\u2019t about to go back to what it was; it was already evolving into something new and different, as Petty himself subsequently demonstrated with the 2015 debut of Tom Petty Radio on Sirius, where he spun age-old blues and early rock nuggets that rarely if ever made it onto the airwaves in his own \u201970s heyday.<\/p>\n The other factor here is the hardly shocking news that this album received little promotional support from the industry it mercilessly savaged, becoming the first Petty album that failed to go gold. Was TP\u2019s primal howl of protest worth it? Well. <\/p>\n The four thematic tracks vary wildly in quality. \u201cThe Last DJ\u201d is classic Petty in construction, hooky and melodic even if the lyric does get rather pedantic. \u201cMoney Becomes King\u201d and the distinctly Beatlesque \u201cCan\u2019t Stop The Sun\u201d aim for a similar vibe but collapse under their own weight; they just feel obvious, a status that Petty has always striven to rise above as a songwriter. And \u201cJoe\u201d\u2014well, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called<\/a> \u201cJoe\u201d the worst song TP ever wrote, and it\u2019s definitely embarrassing, a ham-fisted attempt to make fun of the rapacious CEOs ruining the music industry, a song whose cringe-worthy spoke-sung vocal makes more than one listen thoroughly unnecessary.<\/p>\n The Last DJ<\/i> includes several songs that also fail to rise to the top echelon of Petty\u2019s vast catalogue. \u201cWhen A Kid Turns Bad\u201d feels tossed-off, with a lyric that needed a few more passes to rise above clich\u00e9, and \u201cThe Man Who Loves Women\u201d is a trifle as well. Things improve when Petty indulges his Beatles fetish again on stately piano ballad \u201cLike A Diamond,\u201d featuring a raw, bluesy solo from guitarist Mike Campbell, and \u201cLost Children\u201d is similarly elevated by Campbell\u2019s sharp guitar work.<\/p>\n Scattered through the tracklist are a trio of songs where this album finds its feet, however momentarily. \u201cDreamville\u201d is pure nostalgia, but lovely at that, full of warm piano, thrumming acoustic guitar and dynamic orchestral elements (that Beatles thing again). \u201cBlue Sunday\u201d is a lyrical story-song with a folk-rock feel; there\u2019s nothing remarkable about it, it\u2019s just very well constructed, with sharply drawn, novelistic verses and a sweet, vibey chorus. And \u201cHave Love Will Travel\u201d is a pure stunner, a Dylanesque mid-tempo anthem of romantic devotion; \u201cAnd may my love travel \/ With you everywhere \/ Yeah may my love travel \/ With you always,\u201d sings Petty in a chorus that now feels like an epitaph.<\/p>\n The thing is, even a choppy, mediocre Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album still rises above much of what surrounded it, then and now. Throughout his 40-plus year run, the basics never changed: the man was a genius songwriter and charismatic singer fronting a phenomenally talented band. Like each of the albums that don\u2019t make the top ranks of Petty\u2019s catalogue, The Last DJ<\/i> still has its moments, flashes of brilliance glimmering out from among the ample folds of his massive songbook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6253],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-45140","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45140","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=45140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45140"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}