8 Underrated Albums From Your Favorite Artists
4. Tom Petty - Southern Accents (1985)
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were in a rough spot in their career once they came to making Southern Accents. Petty's previous effort, Long After Dark, had done good business with a few singles but Petty had expressed a distaste for the project. He decided that he would aim higher for the next album: a double CD based around the Southern United States.
It didn't exactly work out how Petty had planned. The band, including Petty, were strung out on drugs at the time and were not in any position to be producing a record. This made sessions come to a lurching pace, which resulted in a frustrated episode that ended with Petty breaking his hand.
After bringing in longtime producer Jimmy Iovine to the project, Petty decided to focus on making a solid album of tracks and ditch the double album idea. What rose to the surface is Petty's most inventive and anthemic tracks of his career. The opening track Rebels sets up shop nicely while Don't Come Around Here No More is an Eastern-inspired experiment Petty created with the help of Eurythmics mastermind Dave Stewart. The highlights of this record are the ballads that appear on the title track and album closer The Best of Everything, the latter of which Petty described as one of his personal favorites.
Amid a nightmarish development, Southern Accents stands up surprisingly well. Petty said it best by saying that the album was not what he intended, but is proud of what it has become.