If you'd asked me to name a Tom Petty song before I listened to this greatest hits (covering the period from the beginning of his career in the late 70s through to 1993), I couldn't have named one, but it turns out there are at least a couple that I would've recognised - in "Don't Come Around Here No More" and "I Won't Back Down", both memorably melodic and also not particularly characteristic from what I can tell - and a few others that have the sound of familiarity, though I can't be sure whether I'd actually heard them before or whether that's just the way they sound (eg "Refugee", "Here Comes My Girl", "You Got Lucky", "Free Fallin' "). And in fact that familiarity of sound is striking across this greatest hits, shedding light on why Petty gets mentioned so much as an influence on the heartland rock sound that artists today continue returning to.
