Southern Accents (1985)
1. Rebels
2. It Ain't Nothin' to Me
3. Don't Come Around Here No More
4. Southern Accents
5. Make it Better (Forget About Me)
6. Spike
7. Dogs on the Run
8. Mary's New Car
9. The Best of Everything
One can only speculate on the precise alchemy behind the creation of Southern Accents. What is known is that by the mid-1980s, Tom Petty had fallen into a creative holding pattern. The brilliance of Damn the Torpedoes had become a distant echo, and his subsequent releases—though never entirely lacking—seemed increasingly unsure of themselves. Something had to give. And give it did. The sessions for this album were famously tense, culminating in one such moment where Petty, in a fit of frustration, drove his fist into a studio wall—nearly ending his career as a guitarist. He survived, and so, too, did the record. In hindsight, Southern Accents stands as a alightly flawed but intriguing realignment. Not quite a return to form, not quite a reinvention, but certainly something braver than business as usual.
The first thing to note is the dissonance between expectation and execution. Title and sleeve suggest a full-throated embrace of Southern rock mythology—trailer-park aesthetic and all. But listeners expecting a Skynyrd-esque exercise in Dixie-fried bravado will be immediately disoriented. There is no hoedown here, no swamp-boogie revival. What they will find instead is a highly stylized and meticulously produced record that—despite the trappings—owes more to psychedelia and new wave than to molasses and moonshine. This is Petty, recalibrated.
The album begins with Rebels, a stomping, brass-laced statement of intent. Its themes may trace regional identity, but musically it strays far from roots rock orthodoxy. Likewise, the title track Southern Accents is a downbeat, elegiac ballad—more piano recital than front porch lament. Both songs deviate from the Petty blueprint, but in doing so offer some of the album’s most affecting moments. There is reinvention here, but it is deliberate, sometimes even dignified.
The album’s most audacious moment, however, arrives with Don’t Come Around Here No More—a strange, hypnotic piece of neo-psychedelia that sounds less like Heartbreakers territory and more like something curated from Dave Stewart’s eccentric drawer of Eurythmics demos (he plays on the track). The sitar flourishes, the layered echo, and the slow-burn arrangement should by all logic implode under their own artifice. Instead, the track soars. If proof were needed of Petty’s versatility, this is it.
Other highlights include Spike, a sly and oddly infectious character sketch featuring a mohawked interloper and his bemused rural audience. It’s delivered with just enough wit to avoid caricature and just enough bite to retain credibility. Less successful are tracks like It Ain’t Nothin’ to Me and Make It Better (Forget About Me), which, while not unlistenable, suffer from a surfeit of embellishment. Horns, keys, rhythm tricks—none of them especially objectionable, but when laid on too thickly, the songs buckle under their own studio sheen.
Still, for all its inconsistencies, Southern Accents is an accomplished piece overall. Even when it stumbles, it does so with the confidence of a band trying something different. The triumphs are genuine, and the missteps never descend into embarrassment. Petty didn’t make the Southern rock opus some might have expected. What he did instead was far more compelling: he challenged his own formula, tinkered with unfamiliar palettes, and emerged with a record that, while imperfect, possesses far more depth than its detractors care to admit.
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