{"id":98786,"date":"2025-05-13T18:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T18:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/98786\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T18:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T18:58:08","slug":"the-only-song-tom-petty-called-too-easy-to-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/98786\/","title":{"rendered":"The only song Tom Petty called “too easy” to write"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ \u0418\u0440\u0438\u043d\u0430 \u041b\u0435\u043f\u043d\u0451\u0432\u0430)<\/p>\n

Tue 13 May 2025 18:00, UK <\/p>\n

As 1994 rolled by, southern heartland rocker Tom Petty<\/a> was enjoying a career rejuvenation and semi-comeback. While never quite hitting commercial doldrums, his classic output with The Heartbreakers was certainly past its heyday and was keeping himself afloat with a string of successful tours over new, indispensable material across the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n

Entering a renewed era of attention with his membership of The Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup boasting Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne, Petty\u2019s following solo debut, Full Moon Fever, launched the Florida songsmith to a second chapter of his career. A majority of it was down to the mammoth success of \u2018Runnin\u2019 Down a Dream\u2019 and \u2018Free Fallin\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n

Continuing his creative rebound with 1991\u2019s Into the Great Wide Open, Petty had established himself as an elder statesman of roots rock barely 15 years after he\u2019d first entered the charts. Deciding to cut another solo record, Petty embraced the unreined artistic freedom that came with the new disregard for in-band consensus and found a resulting songwriting purple patch, writing over 25 songs with the shared production nurturing of Def Jam guru Rick Rubin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Penning enough for a double album but whittling the record down to a conventional length due to label pressure, 1994\u2019s Wildflowers won praise for its gentle folk musings of age and the passage of time, peaking at number eight on the Billboard 200. While never released as a single, the album\u2019s opening title track would endure as a much-loved fan favourite and semi-frequent staple at his subsequent live shows. Despite its popularity, \u2018Wildflowers\u2019 was one of Petty\u2019s most effortless numbers to dream up. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just took a deep breath and it came out,\u201d he told Performing Songwriter in 2014. \u201cThe whole song. Stream of consciousness: words, music, chords. Finished it\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI mean, I just played it into a tape recorder and I played the whole song and I never played it again. I actually only spent three and a half minutes on that whole song. So I\u2019d come back for days playing that tape, thinking there must be something wrong here because this just came too easy. And then I realised that there\u2019s probably nothing wrong at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an impressive feat. Lyrically imbued with an ambiguity as to who exactly \u201cbelongs among the wildflowers\u201d, the multitudinous approach to \u2018Wildflowers\u2019 presents an intriguing array of possibilities, from a past lover, a young child, or perhaps a spiritual communiqu\u00e9 with a higher power. Whatever it is, Petty deftly colours the humble country<\/a> folk piece with an authentic connection to the natural balance around him, a green-fingered elemental number that shines in his heartland repertoire.<\/p>\n

The simplicity of \u2018Wildflowers\u2019 creation came to light several years after his death with 2020\u2019s Wildflowers & All the Rest, a reissue packed with demos, outtakes and extended material from the recording sessions that didn\u2019t make the final cut. Standing as a promo of sorts was the initial home recording of \u2018Wildflower\u2019, still charged with a gentle energy that could have made the final album in its unpolished form.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ \u0418\u0440\u0438\u043d\u0430 \u041b\u0435\u043f\u043d\u0451\u0432\u0430) Tue 13 May 2025 18:00, UK As 1994 rolled by, southern heartland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,44353,21477,44188,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-98786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-rick-rubin","11":"tag-tom-petty","12":"tag-tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114502062027987140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}