“It sounded too good”: The one lyric Tom Petty always thought was too cliché
Originality is a trick. It’s fake. It doesn’t exist. Most of what people dislike about most modern music is that it doesn’t feel original enough, or authentic enough in its own reinvention to seem like anything new, fresh, or exciting. But this isn’t just a pop thing—feigning originality has reached all corners of all genres, through all music history. Just ask Tom Petty.
Granted, the topic itself is actually quite a tough one to navigate, because what is originality, really? Is it coming up with something no one else has done before? Or is it repurposing things that have already been done, in a way that feels freshly creative or innovative? And when it comes to motivation or end goal, is originality really about being authentic in your vision, and not pandering to the masses?
Whatever the possibilities definition-wise, it’s clear that, whenever the topic comes up, no one actually knows. But the thing that remains clear is that most of the time, when things seem to venture too close to imitation, that’s when musicians run the risk of landing in hot water. Countless feuds, lawsuits, and other fallouts throughout history have proved as such, which poses another question: when is it inspired, and when is it plagiarism?
In art, that’s sort of the million-dollar question. Everybody is inspired by something, but coasting that line between basic copying, as it were, and borrowing tones or tropes to flesh out a different kind of world or atmosphere becomes a little blurred. And that’s not to even mention the issue of commonality and popularity, like, for instance, if a musician enjoys a particular song structure, or an overused melody, or even a well-known expression, who can claim to have used those first, in an industry built on standards?
All of these questions are what once caused Petty to encounter a little trouble on the subject of plagiarism. Most artists will be accused of doing something unoriginal or too similar to someone else at some point in their careers, and Petty’s came with his 1991 song ‘Into the Great Wide Open’, specifically the line “rebel without a clue”, which some accused him of taking directly from The Replacements’ song ‘I’ll Be You’, released a couple of years earlier.
Of course, knowing how well established the phrase itself was, especially in music, Petty clearly didn’t think much of it when he added it into the song, which is something he stood by, especially as he claimed he hadn’t even heard The Replacements’ song before writing ‘Into the Great Wide Open’. “I have to be honest: I never even heard The Replacements record,” Petty told the Chicago Tribune.
“It’s just a real common line that everyone says all the time. I think Meat Loaf used it on one of his records, too,” Petty added. “It’s a cliché, yeah, but it just sounded so good in that place, and it summed up the character so well that I had to use it. It’s a phrase that’s been around, like ‘twist and shout’.”
In all fairness, “rebel without a clue” is a common phrase in music, even then, so assuming Petty took it and claimed it as his and his only would be a reach. And that rings true even after considering the fact that there’s almost absolutely no way he hadn’t heard ‘I’ll Be You’ after The Replacements opened for the Heartbreakers in 1989 and played the song most nights.
