(Credits: Songwriters Hall of Fame)
Thu 19 June 2025 16:30, UK
It’s hard for any songwriter to tell which one of their tunes will be able to hold up over time. It’s easy to capture the zeitgeist in the moment with the right song for a summer, but once people start going back to what you previously did, that’s when the moment of truth comes and the audience realises which tunes they like and which were absolute crap. Although Tom Petty never had the distinction of crapping out on any of his albums, he felt that some tunes are somehow more relevant as the years go on.
Then again, Petty always stood up for what he believed in. Throughout every piece of his discography, he was willing to lay his integrity and financial livelihood on the line if it meant getting his way in the music industry, whether that meant filing for bankruptcy for control of his songs or working with his label to make sure the price of records didn’t fall outside the reach of his fans.
That made him one of the most respected stars in the industry, but it wasn’t like he was on his best behaviour in the eyes of the bigwigs. For them, he was a thorn in their side half the time, and when he started to see success all on his own without any corporate help, he figured that it was as good a time as any to say his piece on what the modern version of pop music looked like.
After completing his divorce album Echo, Petty saw the entire cultural paradigm shift. Kurt Cobain had suddenly made it okay for people to look authentic on MTV, but as soon as shows like American Idol started to become popular, Petty started to see a major problem. This was rock and roll being looked at as a game show, and with The Last DJ, Petty made a vicious album that didn’t pull any of its punches about some of the ruthless people in the music business.
Although some pieces sound like Petty being an old man yelling up at the sky, there are more than a few times when he hits a nerve. ‘Money Becomes King’ is one of the most pertinent songs he ever wrote, and ‘Joe’ is the kind of black comedy that signalled where the industry could go if it didn’t watch out for itself, but ‘When A Kid Goes Bad’ was the piece that tied everything together as far as the heartland rocker could see it.
Outside of every song on the record, Petty felt that the tune held up as the kind of song the country needed to hear, saying, “There was a song we were playing on those residencies from The Last DJ called ‘When a Kid Goes Bad’ that felt incredible, very current. I will make a point of playing that song because they didn’t listen to me the first time, I didn’t feel like they understood it and I think it speaks for itself. Playing it in the shows is almost chilling—kids are going bad, bad things happen to kids. I’m not going to sit silently by as that goes on.”
Granted, that song means something much different in a modern context. That titular kid may have gone bad in Petty’s original tune because of how much his label screwed him around, but in an era when innocent children are committing mass shootings, it’s easy to see Petty’s song as him wondering what made all of that rage so prominent.
Petty certainly had his fair share of existential angst and anger buried deep inside him, but music always brought him back down to Earth. And since a lot of kids don’t have that kind of outlet for themselves anymore, this tune is a reminder of checking in on those kids who seem like they are from the wrong side of the tracks.
Related Topics
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independant voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.