Wait... THAT song charted on the Modern Rock charts??

i phrased it awkwardly but that's what i'm saying. once upon a time petty fit right into the kroq playlist, and then he didn't for a long time, unlike the pretenders for example. why, for one desperate moment there, did he creep back into modern rock's memory?

also i figure petty originally being pegged "new wave" was more than "we don't know what to do with this guy, we'll put him with these other people" or even aor-dinosaurs-with-skinny-ties syndrome; he really owned that bleak, weird, dark, hollow late-70s vibe that hung poisonously over everything without having to borrow anything sonically from the spiky-haired brigade. he fit in without having to make any formal overtures. then eventually he got shelved with the earnest heartland farm-aid dadrock mellencamp, which i assumed you don't come back from but there he is, even if just for a second.

tbh i think i's the way he dressed. lookit the suit jacket and polka dot shirt! lookit benmont tench, he thinks he's in the tubes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2nbHpF7-qk

Idk I feel like Don't Come Around Here No More is p modern rock. Music video absolutely sets a precedent for where MTV would go during the grunge years

Petty was an MTV staple prior to Southern Accents. I remember the mournful, Mad Max-style "You Got Lucky" video being in almost constant rotation in the fall of 1982 and well into 1983. His music seemed to slot in just as comfortably with the ostensibly authentic retro-Americana of Bruce Springsteen and John Cougar Mellencamp as the cheerfully ephemeral pop modernism of The Cars and 80s-era ZZ Top, this adaptability a product of styling as much as substance.