It's Good To Be King

Tom Petty

After a couple of albums slathered with Jeff Lynne's thick production style, it was nice to hear producer Rick Rubin produce a nice, clean, stripped down song from Petty.

The song is simple enough, telling the story an everyday guy dreaming what it's like to be king. The song is deceptive at first - you think the protagonist IS king. But slowly the layers of this guy's life are peeled away and we realize that he only WISHES he was king (but that would only happen once dogs had wings). His current existence seems even lowlier as he yearns for a Queen that couldn't run away. Notice that he says couldn't instead of wouldn't. This guy's reality seems steadily worse as the song progresses. It's the portrait of someone wanting to escape their life, if even just for awhile.

This song was one of the singles from Petty's second solo effort. I say solo only in that Petty's name is on the album? The song featured pretty much all of the Heartbreakers. It moves along at a nice tempo. The only thing out-of-place is the orchestrated finale, which doesn't really fit the simplicity of the song. I mean, it SOUNDS nice, but on deeper analysis, doesn't really need to be there.

From the album Wildflowers