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Input: Tom Petty  middle-aged and mid-career in the middle of the grunge decade   released Wildflowers   one of  his  best albums  turning radios loud.
In 1993  shortly after the Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream and Nirvana’s In Utero dropped  a lot of kids in the ‘90s got their first taste of next-era Tom Petty with the single “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” from the Heartbreakers’ Greatest Hits set. But many of those new fans probably didn't have a full-length introduction to  Petty  until  his  1994 solo album Wildflowers. They might’ve even ordered it through the mail-order BMG Music Service (12 CDs for $.01!) like I did. Two decades after  his  and the Heartbreakers’ first Top 40 record  there was Petty  mid-career  singing about middle age and slamming onto the charts with “You Don’t Know How It Feels.” The album's biggest single  with its literally head-spinning music video  lured young stans who  at the time  didn’t know their Damn the Torpedoes from their Full Moon Fever  but certainly knew how to groove to its harmonious chorus: “Let’s get to the point / Let’s ro-o-oll another joint.”
By the early '90s  Petty’s brand of rock ‘n’ roll had garnered enough superlatives to fill a tour bus. His middle-American  “heartland” rock packed venues on the coasts as much as he was the medium markets where there are no airports. Pre-legacy  classic  AOR  accessible radio rock. And “It’s Good to Be King” was the epitome of the 15-song Wildflowers album  Petty's first of three with producer Rick Rubin. Like so many great Tom Petty songs  it had a guitar solo you can sing (bir-nirnir-niiiiiir)  with the added bonus of a Rubin-esque sparkle of strings (bah-dah-nah-nah-nah-nah-daaaaah). Petty had jacked in this pop-rock ballad somewhere between the jaunty minimalism of the album’s opener and its piano-led waltz  closer “Wake Up Time.”
The music video for “It’s Good to Be King ” which was released in 1995  was directed by Peter Care  who’d recently finished up the visuals on R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency  Kenneth?” For Petty's video  Care filmed couples  the middle-class and funky outsiders throughout the world  in portraits  cryptically wearing backstories on their costume sleeves. A trailer park lord plucked toys from floodwater and a pretty lady writhed awkwardly in a quirkily decorated bedroom. They were royals and royal-wannabes   Petty  chief among them in  his  jean jacket with a collar that couldn’t decide if it wanted to point up or down. “It’s good to be king / Of your own little town … Can I help it if I / Still dream time to time ” he cynically sang of self-delusion. It was a public reflection on feeling like the master of a private fantastic dominion  an addendum to the refrain “You don’t know how it feels / To be meeee” still ringing in the ears. And if Petty’s sincere voice fooled you out of thinking he lacked adequate sarcasm  you could skip to two tracks later on Wildflowers  to “Honey Bee ” a blues-schlocker where Petty’s basic-ass genius afforded him to rhyme “trance” with “pants.” He called back to this whole master concept: "She LIKE to call me King BEE " he yawped  and you could practically imagine the shit-eating smirk on his face and those big teeth bracing over murmuring M's and hard E's — "Mah little honey bee..."
That was some of Petty’s magic  hiding something exotic and distinctive in plain sight  as personal as he was populist. He gathered a lot from his Traveling Wilburys contemporaries  like the mystical George Harrison and the cheeky Bob Dylan. But with the eclectic Wildflowers  one of the best albums of his career  he managed to carve out his own cool little lane for his next 23 years. That same year  in 1994  Johnny Cash also entered into Rick Rubin’s atmosphere with American Recordings; two years later Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the backing band on Cash's follow-up American II: Unchained  and the group sounded fucking awesome. As the Man in Black was initializing his descent into his final decade — the wits and hurt of age setting into his vocals — the Heartbreakers were arguably peak Heartbreakers. I like to think each artist paid witness to the other’s evolution  passing through and yet part of the other’s tradition for always.
That’s how it is with big artists like Cash and Petty  who had just finished his 40th-anniversary tour with the Heartbreakers when he died. For many fans  that was 40 years of traditions  of entry and re-entry through the band’s low-barrier-for-entry entry  whether through a benign drug reference or familiar riffs — American  Flirtin’  Draggin’  Wreckin’  Savin’  Breakin’. As the man clearly had no problem with things being too on-the-nose — he literally performed the “Learning to Fly” music video on the wings of an airplane — it wouldn’t be too dubious to say  Tom Petty  might have actually been a king. And  he  was good.

Long Live Tom Petty  The Good King Of The Mid