April 21, 2023     —–     Chart #192

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Today we’re rocking. “American Girl” is a rock song written by Tom Petty and recorded by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for their self-titled debut album in 1976. It was released as a single and did not chart in the United States, but peaked at No. 40 in the UK for the week ending August 27, 1977. It was re-released in 1994 as the second single from Petty’s Greatest Hits album and peaked at No. 68 in the U.S. Cash Box Top 100.

Despite limited chart success, “American Girl” became one of Petty’s most popular songs and a staple of classic rock. It has been consistently rated as his best song, only surpassed by “Free Fallin'” otherwise, and one of the best rock songs of all time, and has been called “more than a classic rock standard — it’s practically part of the American literary canon.” It has also been used in several movies and television shows, often during a scene in which a character, much like the protagonist in the song’s lyrics, is “longing for something bigger than their current existence.”

“American Girl” was the last song performed in concert by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They played it to close out the encore of their performance on September 25, 2017, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, the final concert of their 40th Anniversary Tour. Petty died of complications from cardiac arrest after an accidental prescription medication overdose on October 2, just over a week later.

The song is ranked number 169 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Due to the lyrics about a desperate girl on a balcony hearing “cars roll by out on 441,” the song was rumored to have been written about a college student who committed suicide by jumping from the Beaty Towers residence hall at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Beaty Towers is located on the edge of the university campus alongside U.S. Route 441, and the residence hall opened in 1967, when Petty was still a teenager living in his hometown of Gainesville.

Live in 2002:  https://youtu.be/gqYZLNMDVJc 

According to Carl Van Ness, the University of Florida’s former historian, there have been many suicides in the school’s history, but since the university does not keep a file of them, he “doesn’t know for sure” if any involved a jump from Beaty Towers. University of Florida spokesman Steve Orlando said that no one has committed suicide by jumping off Beaty Towers, which would be a difficult endeavor since the dorm rooms have narrow windows and no balconies.

When asked directly about the story in the book Conversations with Tom Petty, Petty responded:

“Urban legend. It’s become a huge urban myth down in Florida. That’s just not at all true. The song has nothing to do with that. But that story really gets around… They’ve really got the whole story. I’ve even seen magazine articles about that story. “Is it true or isn’t it true?” They could have just called me and found out it wasn’t true.”

In the same interview, Petty says that he wrote the song while living in California:

“I don’t remember exactly. I was living in an apartment where I was right by the freeway. And the cars would go by. In Encino, near Leon Russell’s house. And I remember thinking that that sounded like the ocean to me. That was my ocean. My Malibu. Where I heard the waves crash, but it was just the cars going by. I think that must have inspired the lyric.”

The opening line lyric “raised on promises” echoes a line of dialogue in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1963 film, Dementia 13. Referring to another woman, the character Louise says, “Especially an American girl. You can tell she’s been raised on promises.”

Jam out to this one my music friends, and by all means turn it up! Enjoy . . . . .

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw