Wildflowers

Wildflowers is a great solo album of Tom Petty. As on all of his better albums (solo or with The Heartbreakers) it is full of solid rock songs. The reason to make a solo album with Rick Rubin was to have more creative freedom. I can't say I can notice that. To me each Tom Petty album sounds the same (only song quality differs) and in his case that is a good thing.

A note to the user who selected this album. I really can't understand why you would repeatedly call yourself an "uncultured swine" in such a passive aggressive fashion just because you don't like the Beatles or Radiohead. I'm a huge fan of those two bands, but if it's not your thing, it's not your thing. Honestly, all I can see here is some sort of defense mechanism that takes away from whatever subjective take you may have on those artists. You're not "uncultured" because you don't like them. You may just be close-minded, but nobody can force you to open your shakras, right? Just say your piece and move on to what you can enjoy. And no, nobody asked you to erase your 1300+ albums on your i-tunes or i-pod just because you don't like those bands. Honestly, it's feels like playing a victim card for absolutely no valid reason. Are people harassing you because of your music tastes? I don't think so. Wear those tastes like a badge of honor, and don't blame others for them. Please. Starting a review like this might ruffle your feathers, but the reason I'm doing this is also to state that even if there's a couple of songs on the second half of this solo Tom Petty album I find quite boring or too predictable (mostly "Hard On Me" and "Find A Friend"), I'm not blaming anyone specific if they're not working for my set of ears. I'm not blaming myself, because I know the ingredients that are missing in *my* book, i e. some chords or vocal lines elevating those cuts to something a little more surprising. The album is one hour long, so I guess that leaving those two songs on the cutting room floor and keeping them for singles b-sides wouldn't have hurt the tracklist a bit. But I'm not blaming Tom Petty and his fans either. "Objectively", those compositions are not bad. You just need to be a die-hard fan to dig them, I guess. As for the rest, it is very good or excellent, and the first five cuts are stellar, enough said. "You Don't Know How It Feels" and "You Wreck Me" are obvious hits, "Time To Move On" sounds like a Bruce Springsteen Americana ballad, the orchestrations on the delicate title-track opener are subtle, and the ones on "It's Good To Be King" are even cinematic. A bit later, the barebones acoustic number "Don't Fade On Me" is small jewel. Yeah, after that, the record loses momentum at times, but producer Rick Rubin obviously saved Tom from the horrid production values of the more recent work he had released some years before 1994 (I really like the best ELO albums, but Jeff Lynne was definitely a poor choice to produce Petty -- as commercially successful as those other albums were). In a way, *Wildflowers*'s organic sound and no-nonsense aesthetics also served as a training ground for Rubin as he went on to produce other legacy artists during the nineties -- a switch that culminated with his series of "American Recordings" for Johnny Cash. And for this other reason, I think this album is quite important. ---- 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 4. 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 3.5) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ----- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 52 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 69 (including this one) Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 123 --- Hey, Émile. Tu as déjà dû voir ma dernière réponse sous la review de *Young, Loud And Snotty* des Dead Boys ! J'essaie d'écrire la mienne bientôt

This album came out during my stint as an announcer on an Adult Contemporary radio station, so I had a copy of it and liked it quite a lot. "You Don't Know How It Feels" became a staple on the station and I heard it several times a day for years. I had fallen away from and not listened to this for decades. It's always interesting to go back to something like that and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it today. Terrific!

Didn't think I'd enjoy this but it was really good

This was pretty cool. 4/5.

An excellent album. 4 stars.

Good album

Quite good but found Honey Beea bit creepy

Petty's work is so generally low key and amenable that its masterful construction and execution can be obscured. In the genre to American rock this is about as good as it gets.

Room for another Tom Petty album? I would make space for this one, great album.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: It’s good to be king, Honey bee, Crawling back to you

Did not enjoy 2

Always struggle with Tom – I enjoy his more rock-centric tracks and liked ‘Torpedos’ quite a bit, but he struggles with knowing when to let a good track end. Every song on this LP runs 1-2 choruses too long, and even the more enjoyable tracks wear a bit near the end. Couple that with songwriting which leans heavier into balladry rather than rocking, and I don’t think I’ll be returning to this one anytime soon.

Better than expected, but I don't think that's saying much for an overly long, stereotypical 90s adventure with Tom Petty. The softer moments really show some maturity from the singer far later than you'd expect in his career, but then you'll get a track like Honey Bee or Cabin Down Below and realize it's all just checking boxes so that everyone listening (in the 90s) walks away happy. Shout out to Ringo Starr on the drums for that one track, that's really my biggest take away from the whole album.

Not a fan of Tom Petty or his style of music. I had a hard time getting through few of his songs, it's just too much work for me. Sorry, Tom.