10 Classic Rock Songs That Should've Been Singles
2. All the Wrong Reasons - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Rock is a genre that normally has an expiration date. Even though many bands have put out classic albums over many years, the window for amazing material normally passes once they move past their 20's. Lucky for all of us, no one seemed to tell Tom Petty any of these things.
With Full Moon Fever, Petty saw his career light up all over again with "Free Fallin" and "I Won't Back Down." Though Into the Great Wide Open is looked at as a little bit of a step down from that record, "All the Wrong Reasons" shows Petty pulling from his previous work gracefully. Make no mistake, this song is pretty derivative of the Petty formula, down to the chords being a basic copy and paste of "Free Fallin." On the other hand, "All the Wrong Reasons" may be the better written of the two tracks, with Tom telling a tragic tale of a man who wants to break from the shackles of big business, only to find himself becoming the same business tycoon he despised in his youth.
There have been plenty of love songs sprinkled throughout Petty's catalog, but this is the closest he has come to writing a pure character pastiche in a 3-minute tune. It's not exactly Citizen Kane, but for rock and roll, this cautionary tale is pretty much bulletproof.