(Credits: Far Out / Ирина Лепнёва)
Sun 26 October 2025 19:15, UK
Not everything an artist puts out can be perfect, and even if fans disagree with this sentiment and believe that their favourite acts are incapable of putting out something below par, the artists themselves might be holding themselves to a higher standard, and Tom Petty is a prime example of this.
While his output, both with the Heartbreakers and as a solo performer, is usually unanimously praised by fans and critics alike, Petty himself proved himself to be one of the most violent critics of his own work, regularly dismissing records of his as being unworthy of adoration. On multiple occasions, he’s released records that he doesn’t look back upon fondly, and has outright chosen to shun them in favour of focusing on the next project instead.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, he once claimed that the band’s fifth album, Long After Dark, was “one that felt like treading water”, and he was equally critical of Echo, released in 1999 during a tumultuous period in both his and his bandmates’ lives. “I had just gotten divorced,” he explained. “My family was in complete upheaval. Howie [Epstein] had really bad problems. But there was a record due”.
While he may have been under obligation to finish the album, it’s a period that Petty would undoubtedly want to forget about, but that doesn’t come close to the record of his that he hates the most.
When he was asked to contribute to the soundtrack of Edward Burns’ 1996 film, She’s The One, he seemingly accepted the job because he’d been going through a period of inactivity and wanted to return to recording. He later explained in an interview with Men’s Journal that this may have been one of the biggest mistakes he’d made in his career to date, and if he were able to go back and rectify anything from his career, he’d stop himself from ever choosing to work on the project.
“I hated that record, the whole idea of it offended me,” he argued in the interview. “I only did it because I didn’t have anything else to do. I liked Ed, and thought he was pretty sharp, so I wrote him a couple of songs, and then it kept mushrooming. I took some stuff I hadn’t used on Wildflowers’ really crummy versions, badly mixed, and put them on there. It was terrible, really. I’m disappointed I did that.”
While this wasn’t the worst received project that the Heartbreakers had ever put out, the fact that it mostly consisted of outtakes from his previous acclaimed album and didn’t attempt to write any new material may be why he was always disappointed in his output for this project. However, despite the mixed reception that the film itself received, the song ‘Walls’ from the soundtrack was nominated for a Satellite Award for ‘Best Original Song’ in 1997, so this must have been a slight relief for Petty, considering how upset he seemingly was with the end result.
Not everything can be perfect, and writing a soundtrack for a film may not have been Petty’s best avenue for returning to work after the release of Wildflowers, but at least it didn’t deter him from releasing more, even if the follow-up album Echo is among his least favourites as well.
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