Tom Petty’s Best Albums – A Buyers’ Guide

Tom Petty There were many things during his career – but never a sitting target. His gumption rose to the surface defiantly when he held his fourth album, Hard Promisesfrom label MCA, who wanted to put it into the shops at $9.98, a dollar higher than most records retailed for. Petty threatened to rename the record The $8.98 Albumbefore the men in suits relented.

That was in 1981. Four years earlier, only great reviews in the UK had convinced the label to persevere with his debut album Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. The record had been released 12 months earlier, but the US only caught on to Petty with the re-release of previous flop single Breakdownwhich proved to be a slow-burner commercially.

In 2002 Petty took the brave step of releasing a record (The Last DJ) which aimed stinging even at what he saw as the homogenisation of the US’s network of independent radio stations. In interviews too, he was never backward in coming forward; a music TV channel was blasted for removing ”n’roll’ from ‘rock’n’roll’, and promoting the likes of Latin chanteuse Shakira as ‘rock’ artists.

He may once have proclaimed himself “incredibly lazy”, but Petty kept many irons in the fire. Although the majority of the albums that bear his name were recorded with The Heartbreakers (and members usually played on albums credited solely to Petty), he’s also found time for movie and TV work (The Simpsons, King Of The Hill).

There was his high-profile stint with the Traveling Wilburysthat also included Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, George Harrison and former ELO stalwart Jeff Lynne. That group released one standout record in Volume 1which deserves to sit among the best of the records listed here, and the less-focused Volume 3 (the Volume 2 title having been filtered by bootleggers.)

The association with Lynne was to prove fruitful: Full Moon Fever and Into The Great Wide Openthe two albums the partnership initially yielded, were Petty’s most accessible and, consequently, successful. And in 2006 Petty and Lynne reunited with one of his strongest albums since that pair, the life-affirming road warrior tales of Highway Companion.

Petty’s body of work cuts across genres. He was admired equally by rockers, folkies, clued-up country fans and indie kids (The Replacements were given a hefty leg-up after touring with him).

A phenomenal live performer too, his Soundstages DVD is a compulsive companion to the records listed here, and his legacy has only grown in the years since his early death in 2019, with Wildflowers & All the Rest delightfully expanding on 1994’s Wildflowersand Apple TV’s 2024 series Bad Monkey Featuring a Petty-themed soundtrack.

…and one to avoid

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