“You Wreck Me” by Tom Petty

"You Wreck Me" sits fourth on Wildflowers, Tom Petty's second solo album, from 1994, and Warner Bros. sent it out as the record's second single in February 1995. Mike Campbell, his longtime guitarist and partner, wrote the music; Petty put words to it and first called it "You Rock Me", a title Campbell found a touch ordinary. They cut it anyway because it sounded right, and when Petty later swapped in "Wreck", one word tipped the whole song into something else. Rick Rubin produced: heartland rock with the throttle open.

It missed the Hot 100 but went to number two on the Album Rock Tracks chart, and on stage it never left. The Heartbreakers first played it in 1995 at Louisville Gardens in Kentucky, kept it in every tour after that and performed it 494 times, right up to their last show, at the Hollywood Bowl in 2017.

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