Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

The astonishing brilliance of a few tracks on this record seal its fate as a classic Petty album: "Listen to Her Heart" continues his tribute to the jangly guitar style of the Byrds' "I Need to Know" and nails Petty's plaintive singing style and gut delivery (those muscular guitar lines don't hurt either); "Magnolia" sways pleasantly like a summer afternoon with love in the air; and "Too Much Ain't Enough" further mines the gritty sound of a garage band stretching out. "You're Gonna Get It" and "When the Time Comes" are both above-average rockers, with signature Petty vocals that are by some turns threatening and others genteel as well as 12-string guitar chords laden with heavenly abandon. --Lorry Fleming

From Amazon.com
If Bob Dylan had been a garage rocker instead of a poet, there may not have been room for Tom Petty on the rock landscape. But things turned out great: Petty burst on the scene as it was splitting into two camps (rock and punk) and somehow managed to please both with his whiny sneer and taut, jangly guitars. (Dylan went on to be...Dylan.) Frantic tunes like "Rockin' Around (With You)" and "Anything That's Rock 'n' Roll" (predating the Jags a few years later) helped land the band--temporarily--in the punk and new-wave camp, although choppy guitars and nervous energy were as much a part of the band's style as was a more traditional guitar sound. The now-classic "American Girl" was a brazen nod to the Byrds, and Stones-ish rock sentiments fueled the bar-band leanings of "Hometown Blues" and the sexy "Breakdown." "The Wild One, Forever" proved that beneath the sneer there was a sensitive guy who knew how to write a great love song. --Lorry Fleming