My Middle Name Is Earl - The Official ILM Track-By-Track TOM PETTY Listening Thread

I like Dolly's version, except for the "not ashamed" coda — I get it, I know where she's coming from (literally — I know Sevier County pretty well), but it smacks just a little of uninterrogated Skynyrd-style Southern defiance.

A shrewd political calculator, that one.

perfect. no notes.

i love the echo of "wichita lineman" wafting through "think i might go work orlando / if them orange groves don't freeze."

Make It Better (Forget About Me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnztiaAilWo

i've gotta say it. this is my LEAST favorite song so far. yuck. one of the three dave stewart co-writes on the album. i have no memory of the song OR the video. MTV did not make this video ubiquitous. and aren't they kinda ripping off that Cars video?
i have absolutely nothing good to say about this. this could be the sound of cocaine. this could also totally be a j. geils band song. one of those songs that they stretch out to 20 interminable minutes live.

sounds like something Paul Shaffer would have produced for a forgotten rocker in the 80s. or Bruce Willis.

If it helps, Petty loathes it too; he's called it the worst song he ever wrote.

oh good. that does make me feel better.

I give it a small edge over “It Ain’t Nothin to Me” on coherence alone — it all sounds like one song. Just not a good one. A clunky Southern soul pastiche. Totally forgot it was a single, yikes.

starts out like a reasonable sam cooke inspired southside johnny or gary u.s. bonds track, but soon devolves into chord progressions that sound randomly selected. no amount of raving up could help this one.

southside and gary us bonds otm. this is both the most, and worst, asbury park 1980s song ever.

as a big fan of q-tips, thumbs up to that specific part of the video.

The good news is that the next two songs are good. (imo ymmv etc)

this is them trying to do Talking Heads right? it kinda stinks but it at least has me tapping my toes. "Southern Accents" just didn't land for me at all, must be a genre/sound aversion or something. ploddy 80s piano ballad vibes, idk.

is this what Graceland would have sounded like, in a universe where Hearts and Bones hadn't completely flipped? god it's dreadful. the video really captures the way-too-long, go-nowhere quality of the song. Petty clearly on something --- he's lost his usually decent knack for lip-synching, and his clap-synching seems intended for some different song entirely. i wonder if the ghastly-looking giant ear inspired the equivalent obstacle on Double Dare.

Spike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu8qe2vUUoA

i usually use tom's official youtube audio but that clip sounded way better. i would expect nothing less from someone called "steelyman08". maybe tom's team needs to think about an upgrade.

you be the judge. from tom's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7ALjBfVn9I

When Tom Petty sings In Character it's time to duck under the table like the Soviets fired their nuclear missiles.

its pretty goofy! maybe this is what mike judge heard that made him think of tom for a part on king of the hill.

finally listening to "make it better" - one-stop train to huey lewis town, but the way tom sings it seems to presage the eventual psamawayah of rusted root

not great!

and it's 5 mins long, why

at least "beat on the brat" doesn't beat around the bush.

https://i.imgur.com/OKX2MMv.jpg

Fun song, I like that by the end there's some ambivalent level of empathy from the surly redneck barfly. ("I might need me a dog collar too, boy/Might keep me safe") I don't think Petty ever wore a dog collar, but I assume he and his longhair buddies ran into some surly rednecks of their own. I also like the lazy bluesy shuffle, it feels like a hot afternoon at a dark dive bar.

And even tho Southern Accents isn't really a concept album, it has threads of one and this song is one of them. The narrator could be the same first-person as "Rebels" and the title track.

yeah for me Spike is the best thing on here so far besides the big hit

https://www.gainesville.com/gcdn/authoring/2017/10/02/NTGS/ghows-LK-571315dc-1d90-04fa-e053-0100007f7ff1-f5523cb6.jpeg?width=660&height=497&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

the Mudcrutch/Road Turkey picnic of 1973.

a long way from Los Angeles.

at fillmore southeast

i kinda like the laid-back swampy groove but this mostly sounds like a sketch for a much better song he could've written if someone had splashed some water on his face and told him to try harder.

I'm with fcc on both pros and cons. I'd also like it better without the put-on voice, in the hands of say... Roger Miller?

Dogs On The Run

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV5F1C2NLdI

Petty does Springsteen! i like it!

it's ok. mid-level tom. he was born in a crossfire hurricane. then he met some babe?

The only Campbell credit on the album and also my favorite song on it.

Here's Campbell doing an acoustic version of it (video appears to only be on Facebook): https://fb.watch/s3871tc-9s/

this could've could've been a good bryan adams single. i think bryan would've sung it better.

Least objectionable horns on the album here too imo, they're relegated to a supporting role and don't overwhelm the mix.

this is a major breath of fresh air after these last few tracks imo. energetic, forceful, has convincing instrumental and vocal hooks. it finished and I wanted to start it over again just to hear that guitar part.

Om glad y'all think this album is misbegotten.

this is the first track that actually feels like what the whole album should have been. with DCAHNM as a slightly left-field climax, maybe. i guess the drugs are to blame - their quality control just seems WAY off what it was.

i'm appalled to report that I did have the obnoxious "forget about me! forget about these eyes! bit stuck in my head on loop for a couple hours earlier today tho.

Mary's New Car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6_ZJbK4Qi4

there must be 80s Joe Walsh that sounds like this. just a guess.

a sweet, compact little song. he should have joined forces with scritti politti instead of dave stewart.

Too much inauthenticity for him.

I still feel like the band's adrift in the sound and the studio. Punched-together parts and echo/delay effects are creating a track out of what's actually a limited handful of ideas. I'm not sure this is a band that needs to make tracks of this kind, but it goes down better than it might, and I guess it's nice that they tried.

another one that is better than I remembered

i wonder if nile rodgers would have done something cool with TP & the HB. something slinkier. they could do slinky. they knew how to create good grooves. might have just come out like mick solo though. ooh, bill laswell! instead of dave stewart. that would have been weird.

I still feel like the band's adrift in the sound and the studio. Punched-together parts and echo/delay effects are creating a track out of what's actually a limited handful of ideas. I'm not sure this is a band that needs to make tracks of this kind, but it goes down better than it might, and I guess it's nice that they tried.

This feels like a Petty solo track. I mean, the only musician standing out is the saxophonist. And if the Heartbreakers had a full-time saxophonist I'd probably hate them.

there's a sort of floaty "sweetest girl" feel that made me think of green gartside.

Yeah I like Mary’s New Car. “We wanna go where she goes/We wanna listen to the radio”

This stretch of the last 3 songs is the best part of the record imo. Like, it could be a good album-track deep-cut Side B to a much better album.