“I Won't Back Down” by Tom Petty

"I Won't Back Down" kicked off Tom Petty's first solo album, Full Moon Fever, as its lead single in 1989, and it's about as plain-spoken as rock and roll gets: a flat-out refusal to cave, sung over a steady, rolling strum. Petty wrote it with Jeff Lynne, his songwriting partner on that record, in the wake of an arson attack on his home in 1987, and he later admitted he nearly held it back because it said its piece so bluntly.

George Harrison sang and played guitar on the session, and he also played nurse: Petty had a nasty cold that day, so Harrison boiled up some ginger root and had him breathe the steam before he went in and nailed the take. The song ruled the Album Rock Tracks chart for five weeks.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.