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Four of the Best Tom Petty Covers You’ll Ever Hear
They’re a fine tribute to a legend gone too soon
Given the fact that the musicians I mention most are Bruce Springsteen, The Smiths, Gin Blossoms, and Judas Priest, it may come as a surprise to my longtime readers that during my teen years I listened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as often as I did Bruce and the E Street Band. There’s something about Petty’s music that reaches you during junior high and high school that fits perfectly with the weekly “she doesn’t even know that I exist, I’m gonna die” melodrama that we all suffer through. I’m sure I must have played “The Waiting,” “Insider,” and “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)” a thousand times in 1982 alone (all three can be found on the stellar Hard Promises album).
What comes as a surprise to me is how little I have written about Tom and the Heartbreakers on this site. It’s been nearly four years since the story about my favorite song of his (“Even the Losers”) and two years since the only Rate-A-Record focused solely on Tom. It’s time to correct that…sort of.
I love finding (and writing about) outstanding cover versions of my favorite songs, and it turns out that there are some awesome Petty covers out there. For today’s Rate-A-Record installment, I give you four of those covers, by four very different artists. If…
