8. "You've got a dangerous background / In everything you dreamed of" (from "Insider," Hard Promises, 1981)
Petty had one of his biggest hits by proxy, when Stevie Nicks recorded her lead vocals over The Heartbreakers' instrumental track for "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." But Petty originally wanted Nicks to record "Insider," the heartbreak ballad that gives Hard Promises its title. Instead, she sings it with him as a duet, making the target of its elusive lyrics all the more shadowy.
9. "You better watch what you say / You better watch what you do to me" (from "You Got Lucky," Long After Dark, 1982)
This is the song where Petty discovers synthesizers, but it also marks the return of The Bad-Ass Troublemaker, who gives some unfortunate gal the kiss-off via some of the most amusingly pissy lyrics this side of Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street." Or maybe he's just repeating what was said to him first.
10. "Honey don't walk out / I'm too drunk to follow" (from "Rebels," Southern Accents, 1985)
Petty conceived Southern Accents as an ambitious double album that would explore his Southern upbringing and Southern music in general, but he got frustrated in piecing it together, and eventually only salvaged a handful of tracks from the original concept. This is one of them: a perverse redneck-pride anthem that recasts Petty's standard couldn't-give-a-shit character as a trailer-park-bound misfit.
11. "She's a good girl / Loves her mama / Loves Jesus / And America too" (from "Free Fallin'," Full Moon Fever, 1989)
Petty begins his best overall album with a kind of sequel to "American Girl," where the heroine moves to Los Angeles and starts to lose sight of the promises she was raised on. It doesn't help that she's apparently run into one of Petty's scoundrel types, who lets her go and "don't even miss her."
12. "She grew up in an Indiana town / Had a good-lookin' mama who never was around" (from "Mary Jane's Last Dance, Greatest Hits, 1993)
And here's the mirror image of the American girl from "Free Fallin'," less fresh-scrubbed and apple-cheeked than sullied. It's possible to read the first 15 years of Petty's songwriting career as one long description of the young men and women he knew (and sometimes was) growing up in Florida: all the couples dancing around each other laconically, then inevitably letting each other down.
13. "I remember / When you were his dog / I remember / You were under his thumb" (from "Free Girl Now," Echo, 1999)
Prior to Echo's release, Petty talked a lot about how the grunge revolution—and Nirvana in particular—made him feel simultaneously obsolete and invigorated. He responded with his most hard-rocking album since the '70s, and another super single, making direct reference to its own place in rock history, via The Stooges and The Rolling Stones.
14. "I'm passing sleeping cities / Fading by degrees / Not believing all I see to be so" (from "Saving Grace," Highway Companion, 2006)
Petty's latest album is one of the best of his career, because it explores a single theme—traveling as a metaphor for aging—in a way that the restless younger Petty could never realize. As always, it kicks off with a great single, and a line that describes the feeling of driving at night with a clarity and poetry that's easy to plug into.
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