{"id":201431,"date":"2025-09-05T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/201431\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T05:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T05:00:11","slug":"the-song-tom-petty-called-probably-the-best-he-ever-wrote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/201431\/","title":{"rendered":"The song Tom Petty called “probably” the best he ever wrote"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Fri 5 September 2025 1:00, UK <\/p>\n

When Tom Petty<\/a> wrote the song \u2018Wildflowers\u2019 it wasn\u2019t a conscious effort, instead, it was something that spilled out of him, almost on impulse. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just took a deep breath and it came out,\u201d explained Petty when discussing the track. \u201cThe whole song. Stream of consciousness<\/a>: words, music, chords. Finished it. I 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 at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This kind of process wasn\u2019t completely alien to Tom Petty. He had spent the majority of his career perfecting his craft, which meant not only carving out a corner of music that he could comfortably reside in, but also working out the most effective way he could write songs. A lot of the time, the best thing he could do was trust his instincts, which meant letting the first idea that came to his head be the one that he ran with, being barely able to recognise a song as something good until the whole thing was finished. <\/p>\n

Of course, there were some exceptions to this rule. For instance, while he was great at letting ideas roll off the top of his head, he also went into some songs with a briefly drawn out idea in his mind. This was the case for the song \u2018Southern Accents\u2019 as while Petty was happy to let his subconscious take over when writing, he went into that moment of subconsciousness with a frame of reference. <\/p>\n

\u201cI started with the title,\u201d explained Petty. \u201cI thought at the time I was going to do an album based on southern themes and southern music.\u201d The album Petty is referring to is the record of the same name, 1985\u2019s Southern Accents<\/a>. While many don\u2019t consider Petty as a Southern rocker, due to the vast amount of time that he spent getting sun-kissed in California, he was from Gainesville, Florida. As such, this album was a slight return to his roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was easy for Petty to tap back into those feelings that reminded him of home, to the point that when he wrote the song, the only recollection he had of the creative process was getting to the bridge and recognising he had put together something special. He was so pleased with the way the track had come out that he had to take a step back to appreciate it, and in doing so, he got his wife out of bed so that she could hear the song as it was being constructed. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote it at the piano. Very late at night, about four or five in the morning,\u201d he concluded. \u201cI still think it\u2019s probably one of my best two or three things that I ever wrote. I thought it was very personal, so that was one where it just took me over (laughs). I don\u2019t know what happened there. I do have a vague memory of being extremely glad when I hit the bridge. I actually woke up my wife and made her listen to this song.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Fri 5 September 2025 1:00, UK When Tom Petty wrote the song…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":201432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,67151,67152,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-201431","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-tom-petty","11":"tag-tom-petty-and-the-heartbreakers","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115149932090590806","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}