Greatest Hits (1993)
1. American Girl
2. Breakdown
3. Listen to Her Heart
4. I Need to Know
5. Refugee
6. Don't Do Me Like That
7. Even The Losers
8. Here Comes My Girl
9. The Waiting
10.You Got Lucky
11.Don't Come Around Here No More
12.I Won't Back Down
13.Runnin' Down a Dream
14.Free Fallin'
15.Learning to Fly
16.Into the Great Wide Open
17.Mary Jane's Last Dance
18.Something in the Air
As career retrospectives go, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Greatest Hits offers a near-perfect distillation of what made Tom Petty one of the most enduring and consistent figures in American rock over his first seventeen years. From top to bottom, the compilation is impressively curated—sequenced with purpose, weighted with hits that still retain their urgency, and absent of any real filler. If ever one required a single-volume argument for Petty’s legacy, this would suffice handily.
The two newly recorded tracks are not mere afterthoughts either. Mary Jane’s Last Dance in particular would go on to achieve a level of acclaim and radio presence rivaling the artist’s most storied singles. Yet the compilation’s one curious omission remains Jammin’ Me—a Top 20 single from Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) that enjoyed considerable chart success and still stands as one of the sharper cuts from his late ’80s catalogue. That it was left off in favor of lesser-known early material is puzzling, and its absence is conspicuous on an otherwise airtight set.
That said, minor grievances aside, Greatest Hits captures Petty’s essential strengths with admirable clarity: his melodic instinct, lyrical plainspokenness, and his uncanny ability to make timeless rock and roll without ever sounding like he was trying too hard. A necessary and remarkably cohesive anthology.
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