10 Rock Songs That Were Written By Accident

During his lifetime, Tom Petty was always wary to understand what drew him to write songs in the first place. Whenever he was asked about it in interviews, Tom never really was too keen to reveal what his songwriting process was like, thinking that if he tried to understand then it would probably not come as naturally as it had been. While recording Damn the Torpedoes though, you have to chalk up Even the Losers to just dumb luck.

Going through most of the record, Tom had written each song by himself or with Mike Campbell before bringing it to the rest of the band. The crux of this song was already intact, but there was no chorus to be found, with the now famous chorus line being just scat singing for the most part. Tom certainly had time to flesh it out if he wanted to, but he decided to just roll the tape anyway, not telling any of his bandmates that he didn’t write anything for the chorus. Once the moment eventually rolled around, the now iconic “even the losers get lucky sometimes” just fell out of Tom’s head, which linked up perfectly with the melody that he had already worked out.

Even with decades removed from that recording session, Tom was still knocked out by how quickly it came together, saying that he captured a moment in time and how those words completely tied the song together with the verses, already being about a kid trying to get back together with an old flame. You can have a lot of classics under your belt, but there’s got to be something supernatural going on when you hit upon something this easily.