Customer Reviews

Greatest Hits

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This CD rocks!!! Contains 18 great Tom Petty & The Heartbrakers tunes!!! Including:Breakdown,The Waiting,Even The Losers,Refugee,American Girl,Don't Come Around Here No More(Remember that cool music video?),Runnin' Down A Dream, and many more!!! A great single CD best of!!! Two thumbs up!!! Five stars!!! A+

This greatest hits package of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers shows the essence of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' greatness. Every track is flawless and makes you want to say 'this is Tom Petty's best song.' While I am a Tom Petty fan and own most of his albums, I feel that if you want the essential Tom Petty on one disc than this is the album to buy. You should however consider buying "Wildflowers" because that material isn't represented on this album and it's some of his best work. Words cannot describe how great the songs on this album are. They have stuck, grown, and got better with me since the first day I heard them. They are a part of my life now.

This cd is all encompassing. Taking songs from many albums and compiling them to form a complete career retrospective that is worthy of praise is no easy feat, but here you have all of Petty's greatest. This is one of the best greatest hits albums I have ever heard.

Don't buy any of Tom Petty's albums, just this one. This album rocks and has lots of good songs on it.

This is a fair collection of "Greatest Hits", but isn't a "Best Of" by any means. Taken as just that, a popularity contest, you get what you pay for - what made it to the radio and MTV, often but not always the best music. I'd pick different songs for a Tom Petty compilation, but this one is pretty good and probably about what most people are looking for (maybe in 2003 they'd want to hear The Last DJ and You're A Free Girl Now as well).

The main flaw of this decade-old CD is that it's biased toward the then-recently-released Full Moon Fever, which gets 4 songs. There's only one song from the equally good Hard Promises, and the one song chosen from Long After Dark, "You Got Lucky", really was the one hit from that album, but I'd rather listen to the rockers on it, "Change of Heart", "One Story Town", and "Straight Into Darkness".

Still, for the price of one CD, this has nearly as much quality material as the two-CD Anthology, and I'd recommend it over the 6-CD box set if you just want some basic Tom Petty. If you're going to buy 6 CD's, I'd get Damn the Torpedoes, Hard Promises, Full Moon Fever, and a few CD's by someone else you enjoy.

This 18 track disc is just about as perfect as one disc could be. The first half is full of classic cuts, including "American Girl" and "Refugee", and the last half has "I Won't Back Down" and "Learning To Fly", among others. Plus the two new songs (at the time), are both just as great. One of my favorites is the very 80's, but excellent "Don't Come Around Here No More". Remember the video? The only thing I really wish, is that this was released 1-2 years later. Then it could have included something from the wonderful "Wildflowers" album. Even the 2-disc "Anthology" has nothing from that. But still, this is all classic "Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers", and it will go great with your "Mellencamp" and "Springsteen" cd's.

As a new Tom Petty fan, this album was incredible!! You could listen to it all day!! I highly recommend it to anyone who has never heard him before!! Old fans will also appreciate this because it has all the essentials!! This is a great compilation!!

Including songs from his 1976 self titled debut album up until "Into the Great Wide Open" from 1991, Tom Petty's "Greatest Hits" is probably the best hits compilation ever collected. I'm personally not even a huge fan of the 'best of' album, usually preferring to hear the songs on the album release in its entire original format, but I can't conceive of a better set of guitar driven rock than this one right here. Petty incorporates aspects of classic rock, southern rock, punk, and sixties psychadelia into his songs, and his influence and collaboration with such legends as George Harrison and Bob Dylan is obvious in his sound.

You just know a set of songs is gonna be good when the absolute worst track on the disc is a sharp cover of Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air". Every single song on this hits collection is actually an honest to god hit (I know, surprise surprise), and a quick glance at the song list only confirms this. Even those who already have a bountiful Petty collection will find a gem here, because one of the best Tom Petty songs, "Mary Jane's Last Dance", is unavailable on any other album. All told, this is a greatest hits album that lives up to the name, and can be either a phenomenal introduction to the work of Tom Petty (and the Heartbreakers), or an excellent supplement to an existing collection. They are an underrated band with an excellent body of work that has only grown since the release of this compilation.

This CD kicks off with the great "American Girl" and does not slow down all the way through. "Last Dance With Mary Jane" has the best guitar riff and the lyrics are superb. From the early work like "I Need to Know" and "Refugee" to the 80's hits like "Don't Come Around Here No More" (remember that video?!) and the 90's "Into the Great Wide Open". My faves are "Refugee", "Free Fallin'" and "You Got Lucky" - but there is NOT a bad song on this CD!

I find myself singing along with nearly all of the songs, they are classic and catchy. This is a great anytime CD, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers rock!

The first greatest hits collection by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers covering from 1977 to 1993 does omit some material, such as "Jammin' Me" from 1987's Let Me Up, but on the whole, serves to demonstrate their impact on the late 1970's through early 90's music scene. Key[]=original studio album.

Petty's first single, "American Girl" defined the sound he brought to American music. The title character was "raised on promises/she couldn't help thinking that there/was a little more to life." It also regained popularity as the song Buffalo Bill's victim was jamming to in Silence Of The Lambs. [Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers]

The downbeat "Breakdown" from the same album, is a statement of connection from a man to a woman.

"Listen To Her Heart" throws verbal punches at the wrong kind of man with designs for a girl, and that opening guitar is wonderful, especially as the drums kick in. Petty really socks it to me: "She's gonna listen to her heart/It's gonna tell her what to do/She might need a lot of loving/But she don't need you." [You're Gonna Get It]

The "is she free or isn't she free?" dilemma is explored in the rockingly engaging but poignant "I Need To Know": "I need to know(I need to know)/Because I don't know how long/I can hold on/And if your makin' me wait/If you're leadin' me on/I need to know(I need to know)." [You're Gonna Get It]

Tom Petty's signature tune, taken from Damn The Torpedoes, is hands-down my favourite. The narrator comforts a girl who's had a rough, tumble-down life and surmises "Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have/Kicked you around some/Tell me why you wanna lay there/Revel in your abandon" And the message in the chorus: "You see, you don't have to live like a Refugee."

The other three singles from that album are "Don't Do Me Like That," "Here Comes My Girl" and "Even The Losers."
The bittersweet latter is one of my favourites, as it depressingly realizes the folly of some things too good to last, however, "...even the losers get lucky sometimes/Even the losers keep a little bit of pride/They get lucky sometimes." Really? Well if even the losers get lucky, what am I, who am not lucky at all?

Southern Accent's only big single, "Don't Come Around Here No More" which even has a snatch of sitar in the beginning is a funnily nasty song on fed-up love: "I've given up, stop. I've given up, stop./I've given up, stop. on waiting any longer/I've given up, on this love getting stronger." And the title tells the girl to well... don't come around here no more. It builds up to a raging guitar jam at the end.

The Rickenbacker guitar opening "The Waiting" and the chorus, where Petty sings "The waiting is the hardest part" after seeing all those "cards" really makes this a standout song. [Hard Promises]

The sole representative from 1982's Long After Dark, "You Got Lucky" is a dark brooding number punctuated by 80's New Wave keyboards.

There are three songs from his solo album Full Moon Fever, produced by ELO frontman Jeff Lynne and fellow Travelling Wilbury, which boosted Petty's flagging career as the 1980's were dying out. "I Won't Back Down" defines Petty's philosophy perfectly--"Well I know what's right, I got just one life/In a world that keeps on pushin' me around/But I'll stand my ground and I won't back down." And how can he, especially with backup from George Harrison's guitar? "Running Down A Dream" is the last thing Petty would do, and this rocking, cruising down the highway is a standout. The mid-paced, lazy-Sunday-afternoon feeling of "Free Fallin'" on LA life was the single that proved Petty was still radio-friendly material.

Jeff Lynne produced Into The Great Wide Open and his sound shows on the first single "Learning To Fly." The moral is told thus: "Well some say life will beat you down/Break your heart, steal your crown/So I started out for god knows where/But I guess I'll know when I get there." The title track is the story of a high-school dropout who makes it big in the music bigtime.

There are two new songs here, the slow "Mary Jane's Last Dance"--love that harmonica, and a cover of Thunderclap Newman's "Something In The Air," the song played at the end of The Magic Christian movie. As Petty revolutionized artistic control during his troubles with MCA, the song does fit him.