4. American Girl - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
"American Girl" is a rarity in that the true meaning of the lyrics is actually lighter in tone than the perceived meaning. Tom Petty has discredited the theorized meaning behind these lyrics so many times that the misinterpretation is starting to lose its credibility, but it's still prevalent enough that it deserves its place on this list. The perceived meaning is particularly popular in Florida, Petty's home state; in fact, online forums state that the false meaning is in particularly heavy rotation on the University of Florida campus (for reasons that will soon become clear). The popular interpretation of "Girl"'s lyrics claims that the song is about a heartbroken college coed committing suicide by jumping from the balcony of her dorm, believed to be the University of Florida's Beaty Towers. Upon reading the lyrics, one can easily see how this theory spread so quickly; the lyrics, especially those about the girl standing out on her balcony, hearing the cars "roll by out on 441," being depressed by the memory of her ex-boyfriend, and feeling that happiness is forever out of her reach, certainly paint a picture that could be seen as the moment just before a suicide. The theory is lent even more credence by the fact that Highway 441 runs past Beaty Towers. There are lots of ways to disprove the suicide interpretation. Some are factual arguments, made by students at UF, that point out the fact that Beaty Towers has no balconies and that its windows are too small to serve as good jump points. However, we don't need such facts to disprove the suicide theory, for we have evidence that is far more damning: Tom Petty's word. Petty's disparaged the suicide theory so many times that it seems like that he's getting tired of doing so, but his best scoffing is done in an interview that can be found in the book Conversations With Tom Petty:
Interviewer: There's the story that "American Girl" was based on the suicide of a girl at the University of Florida. Any truth to that? Petty: Urban legend. It's become a huge urban myth down in Florida. That's just not at all true. The song has nothing to do with that. But that story really gets around... I've seen magazine articles about that story. Is it true or isn't it true? They could have just called me and found out it wasn't true.
Of course, as Patton Oswalt says in his book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, once we listen to a song, it becomes our own, and the lyrics become open to private interpretation, to a certain degree. However, when the songwriter states a song's meaning or, in this case, disproves a theory, that statement should take precedence. Such is the case here.