The two albums that Tom Petty hated making: “A tread-water album”

Posted On December 21, 2025December 21, 2025

No artist can claim to have every single album etched in history as an all-time classic. For every great record, there are always a few that don’t quite hit the mark, and some of the greatest artists of all time find themselves slipping ever so slightly when they are in the game for too long. Even over multiple decades of rock and roll, though, Tom Petty remained a songwriting tour de force both in and out of The Heartbreakers.

From his debut all the way up to his final album Hypnotic Eye, Petty was always about pushing his songwriting one step further. For every great tune across his albums, fans also got his take on the world, whether it’s the love that he gets from his wife or complex stories about how time can pass someone by in an instant. Then again, even Petty can admit that some albums don’t quite resonate.

When looking back on his career in the documentary Runnin’ Down a Dream, Petty mentioned two albums that he thought weren’t up to his usual standard, starting with 1982’s Long After Dark. Despite giving him an early MTV staple with the song ‘You Got Lucky’, Petty wasn’t amazed by the final product, remembering, “There was a lot of stuff left off of Long After Dark that I think would have made it a better album. It felt like a tread-water album.”

A difficult fifth record suggested that perhaps The Heartbreakers needed a break themselves as, apart from the glitz of ever-improving recording budgets, the album is a bit of a dud. Even Tom Petty himself wasn’t a fan, which probably says all you need to know.

One of the highlights of the B-sides around this time was the ballad ‘Keeping Me Alive’, which boasts a folksy acoustic feel as Petty sings about domestic bliss. The rest of the album also has its fair share of solid tracks, like the single ‘Change of Heart’ evoking the wall of sound that rockers normally hear out of bands like Electric Light Orchestra.

The rest of the decade wasn’t as kind to Petty, with a house fire almost taking his life and a nightmare recording session to make the album Southern Accents. Although Petty was proud of the album in retrospect, he wasn’t nearly as kind to Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), which has gone down as a low light in his catalogue. After working with Bob Dylan on the single ‘Jammin Me’, Petty didn’t have much to say for the rest of the album, remarking that the title spoke for itself.

The songs were supposed to sound as if they were recorded live, and tried to bring Petty back to his acoustic slapping roots. Still, bar a few wins, the album is a little too shiny for an apparently stripped-back LP. More proof, that every artist is different in their own way and while it will work for others, Petty needed a plan. 

As the ’80s came to a close, Petty’s career was about to take off again after working in the classic rock supergroup The Traveling Wilburys. Having become friends with ELO frontman Jeff Lynne, Petty sculpted his first true solo album, Full Moon Fever, which put him back on top again with some of the biggest singles of his career, like ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Free Fallin’‘.

Once the next generation of grunge rockers came along, Petty became a rock and roll elder statesman, gaining the respect of younger rockers like Pearl Jam alongside his contemporaries like Neil Young. There might be the odd album that doesn’t click with Petty, but the rest of his career saw him pouring his soul into every single album he made. 

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