Tag: Tom Petty

Picking Five Songs From 1979

On By bigbadburchIn Songs By Year4 Comments

It’s time for 1979, though we’ll find no Billy Corgan here, only songs actually from the year. I turned two in ’79 so I obviously have deep and specific memories of all these songs. Next week the 1980’s will kick off and these lists will be batshit for awhile, no two ways about it. But this one was pretty simple to put together so let’s enjoy this pretty easy week.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Refugee

1979 saw Petty and his band break through to true mainstream success, and it’s no wonder with songs like this. This a powerful groove with the organ and guitar working together to blast this freedom anthem into your head. I’ve heard the song all my life and it still gets me going any time it’s on.

The Police – Walking On The Moon

The Police obviously incorporated reggae into their sound, but on this one they just totally went reggae. Very atmospheric stuff here with the guitars accenting things at certain points, but the song as a whole moving on its gravity free march in trippy rhythm.

AC/DC – Highway To Hell

AC/DC have a trove of awesome songs and many were from the Bon Scott era, but I feel like this one really puts it all over the top. This is a seamless blend of great riffing and on-theme delivery that stands as one of rock’s truly great songs. It would also sadly be the bookend of Bon Scott’s time with the band, though the group dusted themselves off and kept on in world-conquering fashion after his death. No matter how much rock radio plays AC/DC, this is one song I never get tired of hearing.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Powderfinger

Rust Never Sleeps is my favorite Neil Young album and this is my favorite song from that album so here we are, pretty simple pick. Tough tale of a young man who shot at a gunboat to defend his family’s property. The gunboat won the battle, if you are keeping score. It’s an anti-war song for sure but one that offers its message in a poignant story rather than being super obvious about it. Grand work from Neil and company.

Judas Priest – Exciter

Heavy metal was about to blow up big in its golden age during the 1980’s. It was Judas Priest who flew the flag for the genre during its relative down period of the late ’70’s, and here they continued to round into form as their own fortunes would explode in just a year’s time. Here Priest laid the groundwork for the entity known as speed metal, lending not only a musical blueprint but also a band name to one of the subgenre’s pioneering acts.

That wraps it up for 1979 and also for the decade of the ’70’s. Great music to be sure, some of the best, but things really get going in the next decade. The absolute explosion of music and the toughest series of picks I’ve had to make kick off next week.

Tom Petty – Love Is A Long Road

On By bigbadburchIn Song Of The Week6 Comments

Time now to look back on a song that’s 35 years old now and was never a single in the first place, but just last month got about the biggest bump in visibility a song could possibly get.

Tom Petty released his first actual solo album, as in not entirely written and recorded with his band the Heartbreakers, in 1989. Full Moon Fever was a smash hit, heading to five times platinum sales in the US and generating three Top 40 hits that are some of Petty’s most recognizable songs. Petty would work with his Traveling Wilburys buddy and ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne on much of the album, though today’s song was co-written with fellow Heartbreaker Mike Campbell.

Love Is A Long Road cuts a familiar vibe for late ’80’s music. There is a bit of synth but the song is otherwise standard rock and easily at home on a Tom Petty record. It’s a tale of getting into somebody but finding that the actual act of being in love and carrying on in that manner is a lot tougher than simply falling for someone. It’s another take on the mentality of “the chase is better than the catch” and it’s certainly a part of life. Mike Campbell stated that he was inspired by a motorcycle when writing the song.

This song didn’t get released as a single but it was the B-side to Petty’s massive hit Free Fallin’. Radio stations wound up putting on the other side of the 45 record and this one got a pretty decent amount of airplay, so much so that the song wound up charting at number 7 on the Modern Rock chart. That’s quite the feat for something that didn’t get the promotion machine of a single behind it.

If that was the end of this song’s story it would be fine enough – charting like that as a B-side is impressive. But 34 years after the song’s release it would gain one hell of a second life, becoming attached to the hottest entertainment property in existence.

In early December of 2023, Rockstar Games released the first trailer to Grand Theft Auto VI. To say this is a hotly anticipated game would be a vast understatement – it is easily the most anticipated video game of all time and probably the most widely anticipated entertainment release of any form, ever. The prior game raked in over a billion dollars in its first 24 hours on sale and it will likely be a 12 year gap between it and this new installment.

Rockstar have a history of using the right music to market their games as well as programming in-game radio stations with solid hits. In this case, Petty’s song was chosen to feature in this first trailer, which garnered over 120 million views in its first few days online.

This spotlight sent Love Is A Long Road into hyperspace. The song saw a nearly 37,000% increase in Spotify streams after the trailer released, and digital sales propelled the song to number 7 on the US Rock Digital Song Sales Billboard chart.

Merely being attached to the GTA 6 hype is pretty monumental for a song of this age, no matter the impressive stature of the artist in question. But there’s more to this pairing of Tom Petty and Rockstar Games. GTA 6 will be set in a fictionalized version of Florida, also Petty’s home state. The vibes of Love Is A Long Road perfectly fit the Florida-ized game and also call back some to GTA’s prior installment set in Florida, the total ’80’s atmosphere of GTA Vice City. It’s a multi-tiered stroke of genius to use this song to plug the game.

Love Is A Long Road is a nice song from a fantastic album, and here we are all these decades later with the song front in center in a way no one would have dreamed of way back when. A shame that Tom isn’t around to see his handiwork, but it will be fun to cruise the streets of Vice City in 2025 with this song playing on the system of whatever stolen car I’m in.