TOM PETTY : WILDFLOWERS

1. Wildflowers
2. You Don't Know How It Feels
3. Time to Move On
4. You Wreck Me
5. It's Good to Be King
6. Only a Broken Heart
7. Honey Bee
8. Don't Fade on Me
9. Hard on Me
10. Cabin Down Below
11. To Find a Friend
12. A Higher Place
13. House in the Woods
14. Crawling Back to You
15. Wake Up Time

Label : Warner Bros.

Length : 62:50

Release Date : November 1, 1994

Review (AllMusic) : Following a half-decade of collaborations with the ornate Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty decided it was time to strip things back for 1994's Wildflowers. He swapped Lynne for Rick Rubin, the Def Jam founder who started cultivating a production career outside of hip-hop and metal in the early 1990s, then hunkered down with a team of musicians anchored by his longtime lieutenants Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. Together, they achieved a sound that was lean and sinewy, fulfilling the goal of getting Petty back to the basics, but the singer/songwriter wrote too much material for a single album. After toying with the idea of releasing a double CD, Petty whittled Wildflowers down to a single disc that ran the length of a double album, a considerable indulgence for a rocker who usually restrained himself to a tight 40 minutes (or, on the case of the first two Heartbreakers albums, a quick half hour). The extra space allows Petty to stretch out and breathe, to spend as much time strumming sun-kissed folk tunes as he does rambling through ramshackle rockers and heavy-footed blues. The Heartbreakers specialized in clean, efficient rock & roll, and while this solo project echoes their sound - how could it not with Campbell and Tench aboard - Wildflowers is distinguished by its casual gait. Whether it's the highway anthem "You Wreck Me" or the stoner shrug of "You Don't Know How It Feels," the performances benefit from this space to breathe, while the larger canvass helps steer attention to the character sketch of "To Find a Friend," the sardonic wit of "It's Good to Be King," and the bittersweet undercurrent of "Crawling Back to You." Other, earlier albums provide a greater rock & roll wallop, but thanks to its extra space, Wildflowers captures the full range of Tom Petty as a singer, songwriter, and rocker.

Review (Wikipedia) : Wildflowers is the second solo studio album by American musician Tom Petty, released on November 1, 1994. The album was the first released by Petty after signing a contract with Warner Bros. Records (where he had recorded as part of the Traveling Wilburys) and the first of three albums produced by Rick Rubin. The album was certified 3× platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America. In 2020, the album was ranked at number 214 on Rolling Stone's Greatest Albums of All Time list. Wildflowers was credited only to Petty and not to his usual band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers because, in Petty's words, "Rick [Rubin] and I both wanted more freedom than to be strapped into five guys." Nonetheless, the Heartbreakers predominantly served as the musicians on the album. The album features all the band's members with the exception of drummer Stan Lynch. Petty auditioned numerous drummers for the album, and eventually chose Steve Ferrone. Petty fired Lynch from the Heartbreakers soon before the album's release, and Ferrone officially joined the touring band the following year, and later became a full band member. (Lynch did play on one outtake from Wildflowers, "Something Could Happen"). Petty wrote and recorded numerous songs for the album, and the original plan was to have Wildflowers be a double album, with 25 songs in total. However, Lenny Waronker of Warner Bros. Records felt that the album was too long, and it was decided to reduce the album to 15 tracks. Of the 10 tracks left out, one, "Leave Virginia Alone", notably became a hit single the following year when it was recorded by Rod Stewart, while another four were included, in modified form, in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' next album, the soundtrack album to the 1996 film She's the One. All ten songs, in their original form, were finally released in the 2020 re-released edition of Wildflowers, Wildflowers & All the Rest. Four singles were released from the album between 1994 and 1995, the most successful of which, "You Don't Know How It Feels", reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Album Rock Tracks chart for one week. It was followed by "You Wreck Me", "It's Good to Be King" and "A Higher Place" which reached Nos. 2, 6, and 12 respectively on the Mainstream Rock chart. The title track, while not released as a single, charted at #16 on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart[16] and at #3 on the Billboard Lyric Find and became one of Petty's most streamed and popular songs. Rolling Stone placed Wildflowers at number 12 on their list of the best albums of the 1990s. Guitar World placed the album at number 49 in their "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list. In April 2015, when Petty's back catalog was released in high-resolution audio, this was one of only two albums not included in the series (Songs and Music from "She's the One" was the other one), but a hi-res version was available on Pono Music. The title of the 2020 book Somewhere You Feel Free: Tom Petty and Los Angeles comes from a lyric in the album's title song "Wildflowers". Petty's family and bandmates arranged a 2020 re-release of the album that includes deleted songs, demos, and live tracks, entitled Wildflowers & All the Rest. The super deluxe edition of the box set included a fifth disc of alternate versions of the Wildflowers tracks, called Finding Wildflowers. In April 2021, Finding Wildflowers was released individually.