Anyone who listens to music regularly enough knows that listening to an album on vinyl versus on a computer are two entirely different experiences.
There are, naturally, pros and cons to each in terms of sound quality, practicality, etc. If you ask Benmont Tench, former keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, vinyl is the clear answer.
“My thought is, if you’re not listening to vinyl, you’re kind of cheating yourself,” he said to Sound & Vision in 2014. “I know people have different tastes, and some people really like the sound of digital. MP3s are great for convenience when you travel, but that’s just about it. You’re cheated out of a lot of warmth and richness of any recording. MP3s are better than not listening to music at all, but still — you’re being cheated.”
But as Tench notes, unless you’re lugging around a turntable and your record collection, digital music is essential for listening on the go, and this is where streaming services, which carry with them their own list of pros and cons, come into play.
Below, we’ve done some research on all of Petty’s albums with the Heartbreakers, plus his own couple of solo releases, and determined the most skipped song from every one of them. Play on, or don’t! All streaming totals as of Sept. 19, 2025.
The Best Song From Every Tom Petty Album
'Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' (1976)
Most Popular Track: “American Girl”
Most Skipped Track: “Strangered in the Night”
It’s funny how back in 1976 when Petty and the Heartbreakers’ debut, self-titled album came out, it got very little attention in the U.S. Who would have thought that it would take years for the album, and even more specifically hits like “American Girl” and “Breakdown,” to reach their full potential? “Strangered in the Night” was one of just a handful of songs that Petty had in his pocket when he and the band got down to recording the album. The rest came very quickly.
‘You’re Gonna Get It!’ (1978)
Most Popular Track: “Listen to Her Heart”
Most Skipped Track: “Baby’s a Rock ‘n’ Roller”
Like many, many Heartbreakers songs, “Baby’s a Rock ‘n’ Roller” was something that started out as a demo tape brought in by guitarist Mike Campbell. “We sat around a while putting a melody down, then we took quite a while cutting it ’cause we were trying to make it sound like his demo,” Petty said to Dark Star in 1978. “It’s a real Midwest teenybop song; it was intentional to finish the album with it. … I said, ‘Let’s make it like a Kiss song or something and put it on the end.’
‘Damn the Torpedoes’ (1979)
Most Popular Track: “Refugee”
Most Skipped Track: “What Are You Doin’ in My Life?”
Damn the Torpedoes was the Heartbreakers’ first album to crack the Top 10 in America, reaching No. 2 and blocked from the top spot only by Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Standouts from the album include “Refugee,” “Even the Losers” and “Here Comes My Girl.” “What Are You Doin’ in My Life?” is a bit less memorable.
Most Popular Track: “The Waiting”
Most Skipped Track: “You Can Still Change Your Mind”
Being the very last song on Hard Promises, we can sort of understand why “You Can Still Change Your Mind” just doesn’t have the numbers like the rest of the track listing. And yet, it seems silly to skip over this beautiful song cowritten between Petty and Campbell. “That song I’m really, really proud of,” Campbell said to Rock Cellar in 2020. “And if I remember correctly, I had a four-track at the time and I had borrowed a Wurlitzer piano and I really loved the Beach Boys. I love Brian Wilson and I was just trying to play some Brian Wilson chords.”
‘Long After Dark’ (1982)
Most Popular Track: “You Got Lucky”
Most Skipped Track: “Between Two Worlds”
Here’s another Campbell cowrite. As one reviewer put it back in 1982, “Between Two Worlds” is “the Petty/Campbell version of a stripped-down Harlequin romance.” But unfortunately streaming-wise it just can’t compete with “You Got Lucky.”
‘Southern Accents’ (1985)
Most Popular Track: “Don’t Come Around Here No More”
Most Skipped Track: “Mary’s New Car”
If Petty was anything, he was a firm believer in an artist’s right to control their own work and how it’s used out in the world. In the late ’80s, Petty sued B.F. Goodrich Co. for using a song that sounded painfully like one of his own, “Mary’s New Car,” in a tire commercial. The company had previously approached Petty asking his permission to use the song, got “no” for an answer and evidently decided to move ahead with essentially using Petty’s musical likeness. “The melody is almost identical and the voice is practically the same too,” Petty’s manager Tony Dimitriades told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “Tom’s made up his mind to try to stop these guys. It’s unconscionable for these people to try to fool the public into believing that this commercial is something that it’s not.”
‘Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)’ (1987)
Most Popular Track: “Jammin’ Me”
Most Skipped Track: “How Many More Days”
“That was ad-libbed completely,” Petty recalled of “How Many More Days” in 2005’s Conversations With Tom Petty. “And not a bad song.” Still, its most skipped from 1987’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough). Maybe just something about that ’80s drum sound…
‘Full Moon Fever’ (1989)
Most Popular Track: “Free Fallin'”
Most Skipped Track: “A Mind With a Heart of Its Own”
Petty and his Full Moon Fever collaborator Jeff Lynne took inspiration from the 1961 Connie Francis song “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Lynne suggested they flip that idea upside down; Petty came up with the Bo Diddley type beat and before long they had “A Mind With a Heart of Its Own.”
‘Into the Great Wide Open’ (1991)
Most Popular Track: “Learning to Fly”
Most Skipped Track: “Built to Last”
“Built to Last” has a great “Stand by Me” type rhythm to it that bookends 1991’s Into the Great Wide Open nicely. According to Petty, it was the only track that he wrote while sessions for the album were happening and the last song to be written for it.
Most Popular Track: “Wildflowers”
Most Skipped Track: “A Higher Place”
Much of 1994’s Wildflowers is, in a word, poignant. But “A Higher Place” is a brighter spot with a message of resilience and forward progress in life. “It’s a nice hopeful lyric,” Campbell once said of the track who added the Byrds-like guitar bit.
The Best Song From Every Tom Petty Album
