Today’s classic song of the day is one of the most popular tunes by Tom Petty and his band the Heartbreakers. The song is “American Girl” and, while it was never a hit (it was released as a single in February of 1977 but it failed to make the Billboard Hot 100), it has rightfully earned its place on everybody’s top classic rock playlists.
Tom Petty included “American Girl” on his debut album, 1976’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. He wrote it right after the band signed a recording contract with Shelter Records, and he and the band recorded it on July 4, 1976—the Bicentennial (and almost exactly 50 years ago).
Mr. Petty said he wrote the song when he was living out in California:
“I was living in an apartment where I was right by the freeway. And the cars would go by. In Encino, near Leon Russell’s house. And I remember thinking that that sounded like the ocean to me. That was my ocean. My Malibu. Where I heard the waves crash, but it was just the cars going by. I think that must have inspired the lyric.”
The song is not, as some urban legends would have it, about an all-American girl at the University of Florida who took too many hallucinogens, thought she could fly, and jumped 13 floors from the Beatty Towers to her death. Mr. Petty said it was about a girl who “was looking for the strength to move on, and she found it.”
Here’s the first verse:
Well, she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn’t help thinkin’ that there
Was a little more to life
Somewhere else
After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to
Yeah, and if she had to die tryin’
She had one little promise
She was gonna keep
And here’s today’s daily bonus video of the day, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performing “American Girl” live on the June 2, 1978, episode of The Midnight Special. It’s definitely one of his best.
