Long After Dark (1982)
1. A One Story Town
2. You Got Lucky
3. Deliver Me
4. Change of Heart
5. Finding Out
6. We Stand a Chance
7. Straight Into Darkness
8. The Same Old You
9. Between Two Worlds
10.A Wasted Life
It is often said that Tom Petty never made a bad album. That may still be true, strictly speaking—but Long After Dark comes perilously close to putting that maxim to the test. If ever there was a record that suggested the creative gas tank was flirting with empty, it was this one. The ideas were fewer, the energy dialed down, and the inspiration frequently absent. And yet, even within the shadows of what is arguably Petty’s weakest moment, there are flashes—brief and welcome—of the spark that made him matter in the first place.
Take You Got Lucky, for example. An oddity in Petty’s catalogue when it appeared, it now reads like an experiment gone mostly right. The synth-heavy plod and stripped-down arrangement marked a significant stylistic departure, particularly for an artist so associated with chiming guitars and no-frills rock. Yet the track possesses an undeniably hypnotic pulse, anchored by Petty’s always-recognizable vocal sneer. It didn’t exactly light up the singles charts—barely edging into the Top 20—but its status as a minor classic has grown in retrospect. There is something admirably strange about it, a quality many lesser bands would kill for.
The same cannot be said for much of the rest. Change of Heart should have made more noise than it did—it’s certainly got the right DNA—but it never quite catches fire. Finding Out provides a nervous jolt of energy, a spiky rocker that comes and goes quickly but leaves some trace. Beyond these, the pickings grow thin. The remainder of the album drifts by without incident, sounding more like contractual obligation than artistic statement. There are no great crimes committed here, merely the sin of mediocrity. A sin Petty had, up to this point, largely avoided.
Unsurprisingly, the album was met with tepid enthusiasm at the time of release, and it has not acquired much luster in the years since. The live setlists have largely forgotten it. Critics tend to nod and move along. Even the faithful find themselves making excuses. And yet, in the broader arc of Petty’s career, Long After Dark serves its purpose: a necessary low to recalibrate, a minor misstep before future recoveries. If this is Petty at his weakest, it’s a testament to just how high the bar had already been set.
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