A Year of Blind Spots: Wildflowers

There's this idea that Tom Petty is (was—R.I.P.) a "singles artist." True, his singles are uniformly excellent. I mean, this is an artist who put out a Greatest Hits compilation, tacked on a brand new song to the end of it, and then saw that song become one of his greatest hits ("Mary Jane's Last Dance"). Kinda wild when you think about it.

The only problem is, the higher you rate his singles, the larger the gap between his singles and his deep cuts becomes, and that makes me a little uncomfortable. As I've said repeatedly during this year of blind spots, I respect singles, but I gotta know if the songs in between are worth my time too. I want to know and love the album, not the song. So does Tom Petty have what it takes?

I guess Wildflowers is a bizarre album to choose if we're going down this path. For one, it's officially billed as a Tom Petty solo album, as opposed to an album with the Heartbreakers. The count is three solos to thirteen band efforts, so I don't know if this is the best representation of Tom Petty music. Or maybe it is? I sincerely have no clue. It's a blind spot. I assumed that the Heartbreakers were kind of like the E Street Band in that they are a competent unit but tend to follow the vision of their frontman with no exception. But maybe I'm wrong!

The other thing is that this album came out in 1994, which was actually after the aforementioned greatest hits compilation, and so it features yet another "big hit" single. Petty's last big hit, as far as I can tell—"You Don't Know How It Feels." But it's weird to think that this was a mid-'90s thing. The song was a hit in my lifetime! I tend to picture all these old classic rock dinosaurs as peaking sometime in the early-to-mid-'70s. But if you are the type of person who considers "You Don't Know How It Feels" to be one of Petty's very best, then that's not true.

So okay, forgetting about all that, how are the fourteen "deep cuts" on the album? All those songs that probably would not make the cut in 2021, were an authority to put together yet another greatest hits playlist?

The answer—which, again, is probably the same answer we've been arriving at a lot this year—is that they are at the very least competent, and at best approaching something like Petty at his peak, but never quite getting there. I think "You Wreck Me" is bar band bliss with a big stomping beat. I think that the title track is very pretty and surprisingly catchy. I think "Honey Bee" is gnarly and weird in all the right ways. I think "A Higher Place" is jangle pop, and jangle pop is awesome. I think "Hard on Me" is that type of slow guitar burner that Petty is extremely adept at. But do I think any of these songs could have been a breakout single, either in the 1990s or today? No, I do not think so.

But that's the burden of being a "singles artist," I suppose. You make like a dozen history-conquering hits, and the rest of your discography starts to pale in comparison. It's unavoidable! And still an enviable position to be in! Tom Petty is the king!