You're Gonna Get It! (1978)
1. When the Time Comes
2. You're Gonna Get It
3. Hurt
4. Magnolia
5. Too Much Ain't Enough
6. I Need To Know
7. Listen to Her Heart
8. No Second Thoughts
9. Restless
10.Baby's a Rock'N'Roller
You could play a little trick on someone unfamiliar with Tom Petty’s early work: put on this album right after his debut, and ask them when the first record ends and the second begins. Chances are, they wouldn’t be able to tell. And honestly, that’s meant as a compliment.
Like its predecessor, this one is a tight, no-frills collection of ten lean tracks clocking in at just under a half hour. Petty wasn’t trying to reinvent anything—just give you another round of sharp, jangly, unpretentious rock and roll. No themes. No filler. No drama. Just more of the same—in the best possible way.
The strange part is that this album took two years to show up, which, in the late ‘70s, was an eternity. It turns out Petty was already waist-deep in legal and financial messes—contract disputes, bankruptcies, and all the usual industry nonsense. That probably didn’t help the album’s visibility. Unlike the debut, there’s no breakout single here. Nothing that would go on to dominate the FM dial or scream out from a car stereo. But don’t confuse that with a drop in quality.
In fact, the songs here are just as well-constructed and just as catchy. I Need to Know and Listen to Her Heart are the ones most listeners might recognize—thanks more to their inclusion on later compilations than any real chart action—but the album goes deeper than that. The opener When the Time Comes sets the tone perfectly, and the closer Baby’s a Rock 'N' Roller wraps it all up with the same understated swagger Petty was already mastering.
Sure, a couple of songs tread a bit of water, but when your longest track barely cracks three minutes, those dips don’t linger long. Petty wasn’t trying to dazzle anyone. He was trying to make good records with his band—and that’s exactly what he did.
What’s most striking in hindsight is how natural it all feels. You get the sense that he could have made five more records just like this one without breaking a sweat. And while Petty would grow more ambitious in time, there’s something undeniably special about the way this one—like the debut—just clicks. It’s the sound of an artist doing exactly what he was meant to do, before anyone tried to tell him otherwise.
And it still holds up beautifully.
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