If rock-and-roll is essentially dead, replaced by the dominance of pop, hip-hop and alternative, nobody told Tom Petty.
On Hypnotic Eye, his best album since Wildflowers (and that’s paying full respect to such great records as Highway Companion and Mojo), he unleashes monster guitar riffs and sticky melodies just like in the good old days.
When it comes to old school guitar-driven rock-n-roll, you can’t get much better than Tom Petty. Through 38 years and 16 albums, he has delivered the goods consistently and expertly.
His latest record, Hypnotic Eye, is performed (as all but three of his albums have been) with The Heartbreakers, and the band’s familiarity with each other and the material shines through on every track. This is as beautifully seasoned as a rock band gets.
The next group of artists in my musical genome belong to a category I’m labeling “FOLK ROCK DERIVATIVES.”
The way I see it, most modern rock music derives either from folk, pop or the blues. I have examples of all three in the 35 artists I’m featuring during this series, but I have designated categories for only the first two.
The reason I’m calling this group of bands “FOLK ROCK DERIVATIVES” and not just folk rockers is they have all moved well past those roots into many different styles of music. But there’s no denying their earliest influences.
Few artists can put out an album on which every song sounds like a billboard hit (whether it was or not). Tom Petty has done it twice.
I ranked his Full Moon Fever high on my 80s list, but a decade earlier he pulled off the same feat on Damn the Torpedoes, his third album with The Heartbreakers.
Tom Petty is an artist who could have albums on best-of-decade lists from the 70s, 80s and 90s. And he kicked off the 10’s in excellent fashion with Mojo, so the man is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.
I don’t know that he receives enough credit for the amazing career he’s forged — he’s too often described as a follower of the great artists he counts among his peers rather than a fellow trailblazer. But you can stack his output against pretty much anybody’s.
Meet Me In Montauk 