Tom Petty & Heartbreakers - Hard Promises
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Free Music Notes for Hard Promises
Free Music Review: Common man
Hit: 5 Stars
If you don't like this album you're dead to the world. Best song - Something Big. Makes you wanna pull a gun on the man before you put a gun in your mouth. Classic period. Sorry all you music aficionados it's a feeling not a review.Free Music Review: A classic's follow up record
Hit: 4 Stars
How do you follow up a classic album like Damn The Torpedos? Tom knew he had to do something special here and after hearing the masterful The Waiting, you understand, he got it. This song is catchy, has a great guitar/organ compound, and is just overall inspired. It's the kinda stuff a classic single is made of. Bringing producer/friend Jimmy Iovine back, the album has that thick and full sound of its predecessor but it doesn't go out of it's way to replicate everything. Hard Promises is its own album for sure. A heavy handed legal battle, a difficult lead up to his breakthrough album, his mother passing away. It was a growing period for sure and this album shows more depth, a more mature writer at work. Coming to terms with his new stardom and saying, "ok where do we go from here". They pull it off with flyng colors.
After shining on all fronts with The Waiting, the album takes a more slow appraoch with the single and other recognizable track A Woman In Love (It's Not Me). It's sparce verse sections with its more rolling along chorus, full of guitars and some great solid drum fills from Stan Lynch make it a key cut. But on to the unknowns: Nightwatchman a great more groove oriented mid paced tune full of cutting guitar riffs and some good stomping drum/bass work tells of a guy who is good at what he does but maybe wants more out of life. Something Big and Letting You Go are more slow paced songs, Letting You Go being the better of the two, it has an irresistable whooa/oooh sung line, its got more of a powerful feel still being a slow song. King's Road returns the band to that Byrds style guitar sound, almost sounding like a scrapped cut from Torpedos (complete with that classic TP & the Heartbreakrs shaker). One of the great underlooked tracks here is A Thing About You, fast paced, anthemic, chiming guitars and a frantic chorus it kinda comes along and reinvigorates an album that seems to take more of a slow burn approach that another decent cut The Criminal Kind takes) than the tailwind rock of Torpedos. Insider is the other hit off the album, originally written for Stevie Nicks who loved the bands sound, it ended up being a duet song, a slow organ/acoustic driven number that appears on all the best of's. It's a beautiful song that really shows Tom's change in the compisition department.
Hard Promises is a much more mature effort. But a great one all the same, the songs dont have that rocking melodicism that Torpedos have, but a more subdued rock sense. They reveal more of the bands Byrds/Dylan influence than ever before. Some feel this be the Heartbreakers very best record and some might be right. The writing is masterful throughout and it's great Tom sacrificed the angry more determined style on Torpedos for the growing effort of HP. This would be Toms last completly consistant record till Full Moon Fever but like all great songwriters and bands, theres still a handful of worthwhile and semi classic songs throughout.
Free Music Review: He was working on something big
Hit: 4 Stars
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' breakthrough to superstar status via Damn the Torpedoes gave him a newfound clout. He joined in the ranks of Mellencamp and Springsteen as "people's rockers," and MCA was ready to take advantage of that. "Hard Promises" was going to be an album that the suits wanted to release at a higher list than regular LP's, and Petty famously resisted. If you look closely at the box of albums in the lower right corner of the cover art, you'll see $8.98 in black marker, a threat Petty made to title the album if MCA did not back off the price increase. Petty won, and "Hard Promises" arrived on the wings of the triumphant sounding "The Waiting."
Just as "Torpedoes" signaled Petty and the band's maturation into greatness, "Hard Promises" shows them on a hot streak that bore the album into the top ten and firmly entrenched them as one of America's finest bands. However, the album starts to sputter as it gets closer to the end, with "Letting You Go" and "Insider" sounding something close to filler...the first time one could say that about a Tom Petty album. It was also noted that, when Stevie Nicks asked Tom to write a song for her and they recorded "Insider," Nicks was disappointed that she didn't get a "Tom Petty" song. So Tom turned around and wrote "Stop Dragging My Heart Around," they recorded it together, and Nicks got the better of the deal (a number 3 hit and the number one LP Bella Donna. In contrast, "The Waiting" peaked at 19 and the album at 5). Had things worked in reverse, this album might have rated the fifth star.
Not to say the songs are bad here, as Petty was still on a solid stride. Both "The Waiting" and "A Woman In Love" have deservedly become classics in Petty's catalog. "Something Big" sports a lyric worthy of Dylan. "Thing About You" got covered by both Emmylou Harris and Southern Pacific. "You Can Still Change Your Mind" brings the album to a beautiful close. What "Hard Promises" lacks is anything that matches the visceral punch of "Refugee" or "Listen To Her Heart". It is still an excellent 4 star album, but not a classic like "Torpedoes" or the debut were.
Free Music Review: Hard Promises
Hit: 4 Stars
'Hard Promises' is one of Pettys most underrated albums. It is often overlooked in favour of his earlier work or his mega successful later output, but this album has it's own sound and some great tracks. 'Waiting' is one of the most well known from this album and it really is an amazing track, but tracks like 'Woman in Love (it's not me)' are just as powerful and the lyrics of this particular track are just awesome. The Stevie Nicks duet 'Insider' is a brilliant listen and sits perfectly in the middle of this album. This isn't always the first album I go to when I want a hit of Petty, but at the right time and place it is just superb to put on and soak up. Worth a listen, not essential Petty, but definitely one to add to your collection as you're finding those last gems.
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Free Music Review: Petty in da House!!
Hit: 4 Stars
Hard Promises contains one of the very finest Petty compositions, "The Waiting"... you can't go wrong. "Insider" featuring Stevie Nicks stands out as a glowing gem, perfectly crafted. I look forward to investigating other albums by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers since I only had the greatest hit collection dating back to the previous decade.