(Credits: Far Out / Songwriters Hall of Fame)
Wed 31 December 2025 16:03, UK
Tom Petty was born and bred out of the golden age of rock and roll.
While he may have secured his start at a time when the punk wave was getting rolling, Petty was indebted to the pure sounds that came out of the 1960s era of rock music, being informed by legends like The Byrds and The Beatles. Although he may have kept that mentality going throughout his career, he did start to see music devolve when going into one decade.
When looking at his career, though, Petty was always slightly out of time when he was making his music in the first place. Since the style of the day was punk and new wave in 1976, his debut on the scene with The Heartbreakers felt like it was coming a few years too late, being indebted to the sounds of artists like Lynyrd Skynyrd in the era of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols.
While Petty could be slightly out of touch at times, his music would prove to be ahead of the curve in many respects, too. By not compromising his vision at any turn and always serving the song before anything else, his music was quickly adopted as one of the progenitors of grunge, freeing him to make any kind of music that he wanted when putting out the massive album Wildflowers.
As Petty got his first big break with Damn the Torpedoes, he slowly started to see the music world changing around him. Once the 1980s got underway, artists were flocking to MTV as their latest creative outlet, wanting to have the most prominent video on the channel that would get them noticed by millions of people around the world. While Petty did make his few inroads into the MTV era, he did think that the quality of music had taken a nosedive.
Leading up to the release of his album Southern Accents, Petty told the Chicago Sun-Times about the sorry state of music happening then, saying, “Music’s really bad now, really pathetically bad. There’s a lot of bad bands. And no one seems to say anything about it. They say everything’s fine, but it’s not. It’s really awful. I think there’s a lot of shit on the radio, really bad stuff. What do you hear that’s good?”.
Even though Petty had videos out at the time, he pointed the finger at MTV for cheapening the musical experience, and heightening samey commercialism, remarking in Runnin’ Down a Dream, “Suddenly the biggest radio station in the world was the TV”. And that perhaps meant that image overtook substance.
If you can’t beat ‘em though, you may well join them and try to change things from a position of power. So, as Petty began work on the promotional circuit, he made sure his forays into music videos were still artistic, creating an entire score for the opening of his first official video, ‘You Got Lucky’.
Once he got the hang of the medium, though, Petty’s videos would become some of the greatest of his time, whether it was making standard performance shots for ‘You Wreck Me’ or sculpting a mini movie out of nothing with Johnny Depp for the video for ‘Into the Great Wide Open’.
As for the 1980s styles, though, Petty was looking to leave that in the past, even joking on the set of ‘You Got Lucky’ that he didn’t want to work with synthesisers ever again. Petty may have had a penchant for writing great songs on any instrument, but he saw his music as something more than just the flash that washed over television screens.
But was Petty entirely right? Well, you can check out an assortment of classics below that stannd to counter his argument.
Some of the best albums of the 1980s…
Remain in Light – Talking Heads
Rain Dogs – Tom Waits
Closer – Joy Division
Disintegration – The Cure
Purple Rain – Prince and The Revolution
The Queen Is Dead – The Smiths
The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
Juju – Siouxsie and the Banshees
Hounds of Love – Kate Bush
Daydream Nation – Sonic Youth
Violator – Depeche Mode
Murmur – R.E.M.
Big Science – Laurie Anderson
Power, Corruption & Lies – New Order
Graceland – Paul Simon
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back – Public Enemy
Songs from the Big Chair – Tears for Fears
Sign o’ the Times – Prince
Treasure – Cocteau Twins
Doolittle – Pixies
Kick – INXS
The Joshua Tree – U2
Faith – The Cure
Psychocandy – The Jesus and Mary Chain
Substance 1987 – New Order
Speaking in Tongues – Talking Heads
Colossal Youth – Young Marble Giants
Deceit – This Heat
Hex Enduction Hour – The Fall
Ocean Rain – Echo & The Bunnymen
Metal Box – Public Image Ltd.
From Her to Eternity – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Architecture & Morality – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the DarkBut still, I take Tom Petty’s point. I guess above all, these classics prove that while great music might not always infiltrate the mainstream, the beauty is that there will always be fresh invention in the underground, producing absolute classics like Juju and Remain in Light.
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