10 Perfect '90s Rock Songs That Everyone Forgets About
9. Echo - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Coming out of his solo years, Tom Petty seemed to be one of the few classic rockers that was able to cross over multiple generations. Though some of his '70s peers may have been timestamped in a specific era, his return to rootsy material on Wildflowers gave him a whole new audience singing along to tracks like You Don't Know How it Feels and You Wreck Me. It may have been a success on the surface, but Tom was going through hell behind the scenes.
After capping off the mid '90s with his masterpiece, Echo was the result of his marriage falling apart, and the title track really paints the picture of all of the complex emotions he was feeling around this time. Combined with stories of him laying low for days at a time in a chicken shack, you can hear that Tom is more than a little bit broken after the fallout, trying to come back down to Earth while also trying to keep his cool when making amends with his ex wife.
That echo may have just seemed like the bad memories coming back to haunt you at the beginning of the record, but it almost sounds like Tom wants to hold on to those sounds for as long as he can so he won't feel alone anymore. The marriage didn't end up lasting in the end, but the songs have enough power behind them to weather pretty much anything.