Song · Tom Petty
“Wildflowers” by Tom Petty
Released 2009
“Wildflowers” by Tom Petty appears on 19 radio countdowns from 8 stations between 1997 and 2026. It was first released in 2009. Its best result is #70 on The Colorado Sound Top 900 Songs of the '90s. In the combined RockLists rankings it is #327 indie & aaa song of all time and #138 of the '90s.
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Video from YouTube (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers). Pressing play loads YouTube's player. Watch on YouTube
Tom Petty opens the album Wildflowers with its title song, and it's about as easy and unguarded as he ever got: a plain folk chord pattern strummed on acoustic guitar over a light, almost country lope, the kind of tune that sounds like it wrote itself. Petty more or less said it did, calling it an easy one to write.
The band fills it in gently: Mike Campbell on guitar and a twinkling Marxophone, Benmont Tench on piano, Howie Epstein on bass and harmony, Steve Ferrone on drums. It never went out as a single in its day, yet it grew into a concert favorite and one of the most treasured songs in his catalog, earned a spot on The Best of Everything, and finally got a single release in 2020, when his home demo surfaced posthumously ahead of Wildflowers & All the Rest.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
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