Editor's note: CultureMap is counting down the Top 100 songs of Tom Petty's career in anticipation of his concert at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion Sept. 24. Stay tuned for the selections each week and for chances to win tickets to the show.

Anyone who thinks that Tom Petty doesn't provoke a strong reaction anymore wasn't in upstate New York this weekend. For when the 59-year-old Petty and the Heartbreakers hit the summer hamlet of Darien Lake for a concert, chaos that Tia Tequila could appreciate broke out.

More than 30 concert goers were arrested in all, some of them for swinging on police officers who tried to prevent them from moving into better seats that they didn't have tickets for at the show. Petty's still got it.

For further proof, check out selections in the Ultimate Tom Petty Countdown that include a sneaky anti-war message, a cowboy song that's still relevant today and a riff on a Beatles song that's better the original that obviously influenced it.

Song 70: “Deliver Me”

Album: Long After Dark

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

“I was born with something down inside of me/And it’s carried me over, delivered me.” Tom Petty doesn’t specify what that something is on this underrated track off Long After Dark, but we can guess that it’s the same something that has made his music so special for so long. It’s just that tiny flash of autobiography peeking out, subtly hidden in the second verse, that brings this one up a notch.

Those opening staccato blasts always remind me of “Hurts So Good” by John Cougar, or whatever the hell he was calling himself in those days, but “Deliver Me” is a far more heartfelt song. The song is about the willingness to gamble on romantic transcendence at the risk of heartbreak, rather than settling for the path of least resistance.

All of this is anchored by an airtight Heartbreakers’ performance and an emotional vocal from Petty, a vocal that suggests that this one might have been more personal than just your average album cut.

Song 69: “No Second Thoughts”
Album: You’re Gonna Get It!

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

This one is a fascinating little curve ball found on You’re Gonna Get It! Up to that point in their career, the Heartbreakers, although they had shown a bit of variance in style, had kept the tempo to their songs at ramming speed with electric guitars front and center.

“No Second Thoughts” flips the script with a breezy pace, gently strummed acoustic guitars, and a bang-whatever-is-closest approach to percussion. In fact, you can get so lost in the style that you can end up missing Petty’s niftily poignant story of two lost souls finding a measure of redemption in each other.

The lovely chorus finds the pair leaving their problems behind, if only for the moment: “We’ll drive for the line now/There’s nothing to be lost/You and I will cross over/With no second thoughts.”

It’s a winning sentiment, and I can’t help but root for this pair every time I hear this one. Even if they don’t quite make it though, they’ve got some catchy change-of-pace music as soundtrack for their adventures.

Song 68: “Makin’ Some Noise”
Album: Into the Great White Open

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Released on 1991’s Into the Great White Open, “Makin’ Some Noise” finds Petty shaking his head in disbelief that he’s still blasting away at his guitar just like he was when he was a kid. Imagine what he thinks now, having just released yet another hard-rocking album and currently criss-crossing the country on a major tour almost two decades after laying this song down.

When you’ve got a song called “Makin’ Some Noise” you best live up to that challenge, and the Heartbreakers do so something fierce. Not only does Mike Campbell set the tone with a fearsome opening riff, but he also gets to have some fun later on in the song with a mischievous wah-wah solo. Meanwhile Stan Lynch keeps everything from unraveling by laying down a beat both precise and muscular.

Petty does indulge in some self-mythologizing here, imagining himself as a boy playing along to some mysterious music seeming to waft in from the heavens. The track is so much fun that he gets away with it, and ultimately he stands triumphant. “Makin’ Some Noise” may be oversimplifying what Petty and his buddies have been doing on all these years, but, when the noise is this much of a gas, no need to analyze it.

Song 67: “Square One”
Album: Highway Companion

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

This one snuck into the public consciousness via the soundtrack to the Cameron Crowe flop Elizabethtown in 2005 a few months before Petty included it on Highway Companion. It’s so hushed and unassuming that its myriad charms can sneak up on the listener, but once they get hold, there’s no denying them.

Here is Petty once again surveying the ground he’s covered, aware of his mistakes, but, this time at least, seeing a positive outcome. “Last time through I hid my tracks,” he sings, “So well I could not get back.”

If the journey was ultimately successful, it was not without its setbacks, as the chorus makes clear: “It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears/It took a long time to get back here.”

Petty’s acoustic guitar is played so delicately that it’s as if he’s afraid to shatter his newfound sense of calm. Mike Campbell’s bending slide guitar is the only embellishment to the pretty acoustic tune. Square one is a term that usually connotes losing progress, a failure of some sort. Petty’s “Square One” is a place of forgiveness, a chance to rewrite personal history with an eye towards redemption.

Song 66: “Something Big”
Album: Hard Promises

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Writing story-songs might be one of the hardest tasks in songwriting, simply because you don’t have as much time to get the gist of the tale across in just a few sparse verses and refrains. Petty gets it right on this track from Hard Promises, and he does it by leaving out as much as he puts in.

As a result, we can’t know for sure what happened to our hero Speedball, a name that sounds like Petty should be paying some kind of royalty to Bruce Springsteen, who named countless similar hepcat dirtbag characters through the years. We can assume that it’s something untoward, although he gets little sympathy from the motel staff, who dismiss him and his fate as just another “clown working on something big.”

Of course, Speedball’s motivation for his shady dealings is his downtrodden lot in life; as he puts it, “It wasn’t no way to live.” With the Heartbreakers doing gloomy justice to this tale, you can almost imagine a screenwriter mucking up the story while trying to extrapolate from Petty’s bare-bones outline. Come to think of it, maybe the songwriter has an edge of his own after all. He can leave the story full of holes and allow the listener to fill them up.

Song 65: “The Apartment Song”
Album: Full Moon Fever

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

This is the lone song on Full Moon Fever that wasn’t written during the recording of that album. Petty had a demo of it lying around with Stevie Nicks singing harmonies (which later surfaced on the Playback collection.) Jeff Lynne asked him if he had anything lying around to fill out the album, and “The Apartment Song” was reborn.

It turned out to be a good choice, as the song is well-suited to Fever’s breezy, off-the-cuff aesthetic. Lyrically, it sounds improvised but not sloppy. The rollicking rockabilly groove is aided by Benmont Tench’s tinkling piano, on what was his lone contribution to the project. Great chorus as well, but that’s par for the course with TP.

Best of all is the brief, Buddy Holly-inspired, guitar-and-drum breakdown. At any moment, you half-expect Petty to break into a few bars of “Peggy Sue.” It’s that kind of anything-goes approach that made the album so special and transformed “The Apartment Song” from a leftover to a winner.

Song 64: “Into the Great Wide Open”
Album: Into the Great Wide Open

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

I forced myself to really try to re-listen to this song once again, as if hearing it anew, because, quite frankly, I felt a little burnt-out on the song. It’s one of those Petty tunes that classic rock radio really beats to death, and there are a lot of his songs that deserve a wider audience that will never get a fraction of the airplay of this one.

Let’s face it; that memorable, Johnny Depp-as-rock-burnout video, certainly did this song a great favor, propelling it to hit status. It’s got a tepid pace, with that descending chord pattern churning away, and the moral of the story, that you’re only as good as your last hit, is as old as the music business itself.

A fresh examination, however, reveals some nuances that reminded me why I liked the song in the first place. Those little guitar breaks in between sections provide great hooks throughout. The refrain is undeniably catchy, with Jeff Lynne’s ELO-flavored backing vocals providing a bit of wonder tinged with melancholy. And, though it may be an old story, Petty tells it damn well, with knowing winks of humor and an unresolved ending (at least if you ignore the video) which lets us guess what became of Eddie once the hits ran dry.

So maybe it’s not radio’s fault for turning me against “Into the Great Wide Open.” Maybe it’s my own fault for taking its cleverness and craft for granted.

Song 63: “Change Of Heart”
Album: Long After Dark

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Speaking of ELO, Petty had them in mind when he set about writing this mini-hit (No. 21 on the US charts) from Long After Dark. His template was “Do Ya” and its chunky opening chords, and you can hear those chords echoed in “Change Of Heart.”

Aside from that though, the song bears little resemblance to the symphonic rock of future Petty producer Jeff Lynne’s old band. Actually the song sounds very much of its time (1982), and, to these ears, bears more of a resemblance to “Jesse’s Girl” than anything else. Can’t imagine that was what TP was looking for, but both songs share an innate catchiness tied to those big guitars.

This is a great example of Petty’s undeniable ability to churn out a hit without pandering too much to court radio. “Change Of Heart” is no magnum opus, but it’s designed by its creator and produced by Jimmy Lovine to create maximum impact when blasted out of car speakers. It achieves that goal wonderfully, and that’s a great achievement in itself.

Song 62: “Alright For Now”
Album: Full Moon Fever

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

To the long list of rock lullabies, feel free to add this unabashedly pretty offering from Full Moon Fever. Tom Petty and Mike Campbell do some intricate finger-picking on acoustic guitar without ever raising the volume level too high. Wouldn’t want to wake up any dozing youngsters now, would they?

The song is extremely short (even with the false start included), so it’s imperative that Petty and Campbell make things extra-slumberrific in a hurry. They accomplish this with a melody that would have to rank as one of the loveliest in the TP catalog.

Petty’s lyrics are revealing even with just the few words he uses. “I spent my life traveling, spent my life free,” he sings. “I could not repay all you’ve done for me.” That freedom doesn’t seem all that appealing compared with the love of family that anchors him.

As a dad myself, I’m a sucker for a good lullaby, and I must admit that “Alright For Now” worked its way into my repertoire often on those nights when I carried my daughter around on my shoulder as her bedtime approached. And when I’d sing, “Unfurrow your brow,” it was usually my brow that would unfurrow first as I looked down at that divinely beautiful child.

There I go again. I told you lullabies get me every time.

Song 61: “Two Gunslingers”
Album: Into the Great Wide Open

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Leave it to Petty to subtly slip an anti-war message into a quasi-comical tale of two reticent gunfighters who leave an angry crowd in their wake when they decide to ride off into the sunset. The message isn’t in-your-face, but I think the idea is that ending war has to start somewhere, so why not with two individuals?

That would seem to be the impetus for the refrain of “I’m taking control of my life now.” This is nice mid-tempo number off Into the Great Wide Open, one that was apparently partly inspired by a poster of an old Western movie that Tom Petty had in his collection.

And the end result of these gunfighters acting so out of character? A town that can’t even remember if gunfights ever existed. The fact that this song plays like such a fable is a seriously sad commentary on the modern world.

Song 60: “No More”
Album: Echo

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

By all accounts, the making of Echo was not a happy time for Tom Petty. He was going through a painful divorce, which was seeping into the songwriting, and his band was suffering as well due to the personal problems of bassist Howie Epstein. “No More” sounds like a man who’s at the end of his tether, and he’d rather walk away from it all than go through the motions.

The weariness is audible in Petty’s vocal, as he dances around the gentle acoustic guitars and elegant piano fills. It sounds as if even rock and roll can’t sustain him anymore, which, for a diehard like Petty, shows just how dejected he was: “It used to be a big deal/But I ain’t gonna do it if ain’t real.”

It’s hard to imagine that Petty ever would have walked away from it all, but “No More” certainly does present a fascinatingly different side of the man than we’re accustomed to seeing, or hearing, as the case may be. Luckily, for us, he made it out of that swale and did eventually begin to “feel it again.” One can only wonder if that little lack of enthusiasm came close to being a permanent malaise.

Song 59: “Good Enough”
Album: Mojo

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Much of Mojo was devoted to Petty’s blues fixation, which robbed the songs of both TP’s idiosyncratic songwriting voice and the Heartbreakers’ unique alchemy. Ironically, it took the band’s copying the blueprint of an old Beatles song to truly sound like themselves again.

Anyone who has heard both songs cannot possibly miss the similarities between “Good Enough” and the Abbey Road rumbler “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” Petty’s song basically uses the extended outro of “Heavy” as the jumping off point for his composition, with guitarists TP, Mike Campbell, and Scott Thurston aping those dark arpeggios and sharp staccato blasts. But the group sinks their teeth into things with an abandon that Mojo’s genre moves sorely lack.

Whereas those blues songs sound professional but bland, “Good Enough” burns with passion.

It also allows the band to get away with the imitation; they take things so far to the hilt that the song becomes their own. And Petty seems liberated as well, turning in a winningly wry portrait of a wild child and the guy who’s heart she’s about to break. The humor is sharp, the rhyming is nimble: “God bless this land/God bless this whiskey/I can’t trust love/It’s far too risky.” His final line reveals that this guy ultimately has no choice to accept her and her wayward ways: “Gonna have to be good enough.”

I know it’s blasphemy to a lot of Beatles fans, but I’ve always found “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to be a bit overwrought and forced. But I have to give it credit for providing the impetus for a killer Heartbreaker performance.

Song 58: “Even The Losers”
Album: Damn the Torpedoes

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Here we are again in the Heartbreakers’ late '70s, early '80s comfort zone when their Midas touch was nearly unparalleled in the rock world. “Even The Losers” is a piece of bittersweet reflection, one man looking back at a youthful romance that still exerts a powerful hold on him after all these years. With details that only somebody who has lived through it could possibly know, it’s a particularly poignant work.

Musically it’s not anything revolutionary, but it’s buffed up nicely by producer Jimmy Iovine until it’s rock-radio ready. The rhythm section of Ron Blair and Stan Lynch are in fine form, but overall it’s just a workmanlike band performance.

That’s fine though, because the music stays out of the way of Petty’s reminiscing. Every time he looks back, he sees two kids hopelessly in love, so the eventual outcome of the romance still bewilders him. The self-deprecating refrain is a resignation to the truth: That this girl was probably leaving him from the moment they met. “Even The Losers” is a stirring testament to those times when our perception and our reality form the widest chasm available, times that usually occur when we’re in love.

Song 57: “Have Love Will Travel”
Album: The Last DJ

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Petty intended this song as a summation of all of the characters in the narrative on The Last DJ, but many of those characters never really made it into the finished album (hence the mention of someone named Maggie here, who seems to show up out of nowhere). No matter. The song works just fine, thanks to a crafty band performance and Petty’s heartfelt lyrics.

Even as he realizes how the girl he’s addressing has made one too many compromises to get through her life (“You can’t remember/When the lines you drew/Began to blur”), he forgives her and wishes her love in the choruses. He also has time to send a shout-out to all the bad boys and girls who love their music religiously. It’s a truly warm-hearted message on an album otherwise filled with frustration and cynicism.

Petty’s band is more than up to the task of this shapeshifting song, which seems to alter itself ever so slightly in each section, from brawny rocker in the verses to gentle whisper in the refrains. Drummer Steve Ferrone handles all of these changes without even the slightest hiccup, and, for the whole band, it feels like a sigh of relief to be let loose on a song full of such good feelings. That love that Petty wishes seems to travel to eternity on the strength of this track.

Song 56: “A Face In The Crowd”
Album: Full Moon Fever

Adobe Flash Required for flash player.

Elegant in its understatement and saying a lot without really saying much of anything at all, “A Face In The Crowd” proves Petty’s ability to create waves of emotion without spelling everything out. That it feels like little effort was exerted is even more of a testament to his talent as a songwriter.

The neat thing is the way the insistently somber backing music plays up against the seemingly positive lyrics. If you just read the lyric sheet, which won’t take more than a few seconds really, it seems like it tells the tale of a man who is grateful for the luck that brought this woman into his life.

Yet you would never listen to “A Face In The Crowd” and say that it was a happy song. That’s because the music leaves you looking at this glass as half-empty. It makes those lyrics seem less grateful and more fearful. Maybe the fortune that brought this face in the crowd into his life could easily reverse and take her away.

Maybe she could end up being a face in the crowd once again. This concession to the darkness only deepens his appreciation of the light, and deepens our own appreciation of this unassumingly profound song.