10 Darkest Hard Rock Songs Of All Time

10. Something Big - Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers

When talking about the most dangerous rock and roll ever made, Tom Petty doesn't automatically spring to mind. For most of the new school, this is the kind of heartland rock that you'd expect out of someone like Bruce Springsteen from back in the day. Then again, even the Boss never had the guts to take on a track like Something Big.

From the opening licks, this is a far cry from something like Here Comes My Girl, with the whole thing feeling like you're in some sort of drunken haze. Once Tom opens his mouth though, the lyrics are deadly serious, talking about a man on the wrong side of the tracks who has finally had his demons catch up with him. Even though he was working to build himself up, his shady practices have come back to bite him, leaving him completely helpless in a motel room.

This isn't some sort of metaphor on Petty's part either. Just wait until the last verse and you actually get the man's corpse being autopsied and the authorities chalking it up to just another sucker who was working on something big. Since a song like Refugee was the album before, this may as well be a song lifted out of some old Western. In just a few short years, Petty grew up and inherited the kind of songwriting reserved for someone like Johnny Cash.