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 weekend.

We’re getting very near the end of the Tom Petty countdown, and I’m amazed at the level of these songs that are in this batch. I mean, c’mon, “Refugee”? “I Won’t Back Down”? “A Woman In Love?”

It’s like some classic-rock programmer’s dream-come-true.

But, then again, that’s ultimately the point of this whole exercise. It’s fun to argue about where songs deserve to be ranked, but anyone who tries to rank them will have to split some hairs to separate them. This list is, more than anything, a celebration of Petty’s consistent brilliance and staggering song catalog.

I wrote the thing, and, frankly, even I can’t wait to see next week’s Top 10. The suspense is killing me. Until then, here is a stellar batch of 15 songs to tide us all over

Song 25: “The Waiting”
Album: Hard Promises

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Some songs were just built to be a lead single, and “The Waiting” is a prime example. With hooks galore and brimming with youthful energy, the song rolled into the Top 20 in 1981 as if it belonged their all the while, which it truly did. I’m not sure if it’s depressing or nostalgic to think back to a time when such well-crafted rock songs could nestle up alongside of pop and R&B on the radio. It certainly has been a while.

The other reason that “The Waiting” seemed so tailor-made for its time and place is that it came out on the heels of Petty’s refusal to allow his album Hard Promises to be sold at higher than the normal price.

While the song has nothing to do with that little imbroglio, that refrain couldn’t have seemed more apropos at the time of its release.

Petty has talked in interviews about how we walked around for weeks with the chorus, knowing he had something special, while searching for the rest of the song. So the track proved pretty meaningful to its creator as well, since it must have been excruciating to be on the brink of something so great and yet not seal the deal. Like the man says, “The waiting is the hardest part,” after all.

Song 24: “The Last DJ”
Album: The Last DJ

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“Well, you can’t turn him into a company man/You can’t turn him into a whore.” With those fighting words Tom Petty stakes his territory in the battle for the soul of radio and dares anyone to step up and face him. In an album that’s full of righteous rage, the title track really focuses the message without dulling the impact.

It helps that the Heartbreakers produced such a blistering track to deliver that message. The nimble bassline is played by none other than Petty himself, as this was the brief period before the return of Ron Blair to the fold. The song really builds up the drama, especially in the short breakdown featuring staticky DJ voices desperately trying to be heard.

Petty crams a whole bushelful of winning one-liners into this song, some just shy of bilious (“As we celebrate mediocrity/All the boys upstairs want to see/How much you’ll pay for what you use to get for free”), some so simple they’re profound (“And he don’t want to change/What don’t need to change”). The final image of him adjusting his rabbit ears and dancing to a distant station represents one man’s small triumph in the face of enormous opposition.

There was a lot of talk that radio stations wouldn’t play “The Last DJ” because of the pot shots it took at them. The state of radio being what it was, and is, I’m more inclined to think they didn’t play it for another reason: It was too damn good.

Song 23: “Damaged By Love”
Album: Highway Companion

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This classic weeper from Highway Companion sounds as if it could have been composed for Petty’s former Wilbury brother Roy Orbison. That’s how exquisitely sorrowful it is. Hell, it’s even got some timpani to ramp up the heartache even further.

This song is produced to the hilt by Jeff Lynne, and he applies some lovely harmonies in the chorus that make he and Petty sound a little like the Righteous Wilburys. It’s a great melody as well, which makes the choice to have the guitar solo simply recreate the notes of the main tune such a winning one.

Petty’s lyrics are purposely vague here at first, skirting around the edges of this girl’s malaise and letting the direct emotional pull of the chorus do the heavy lifting. In the final verse, she tries to connect but comes up short in a truly moving scene: “I love you so deep/But you can’t understand.” What a great choice of words, to say it that way instead of the predictable “I love you so much.” It makes the emotion somehow even more wrenching.

All that’s left if for the refrain to come in one more time, the timpani to bum-bom, and for you, the listener, well, wipe away that tear forming in the corner of your eye as discreetly as possible.

Song 22: “King Of The Hill”
Album: Back from Rio (by Roger McGuinn)

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I’ve always found the knee-jerk comparisons between Tom Petty and Roger McGuinn a bit misleading. Yes, there is a vocal similarity when Petty raises into his higher register, and the Heartbreakers occasionally have made use of a twelve-string guitar (though not as often as you might think). To me though, TP’s music has always been more rough-and-tumble than the Byrds’ atmospheric beauty.

But the two men milk their similarities for all they’re worth on this excellent one-off collaboration found on McGuinn’s excellent 1990 comeback album, Back From Rio. When they trade verses, the difference in the men’s voices show up clearly; McGuinn’s has an unmistakable elegance, narrating the action from high above it all, while Petty’s voice is grittier, as if he’s right in the middle of all the greed and debauchery on display.

And yet when they join for the bittersweet chorus to this song that might as well have been called “L.A. State Of Mind,” it’s near impossible to tell the two voices apart. Even as they’re singing in harmony, they seem to meld into one.

There’s a fantastic scene in the Petty documentary Runnin’ Down A Dream where he dresses down a hapless record executive for trying to push McGuinn into recording a lousy song. Tom’s admiration for this rock legend is evident in the ferocity with which he goes on the attack at that moment. With “King Of The Hill,” he made sure to give McGuinn a song worthy of his prodigious talents.

Song 21: “Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)”
Album: Hard Promises

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“Woman In Love” shows its cards right off the bat and then takes them away. In an ingeniously subtle bit of song architecture, the Heartbreakers come blasting in with the music that will eventually support the chorus. Then, just as soon as we’ve gotten used it to it, it drops away.

What’s left if just Tom Petty on vocals and special guest bassist Duck Dunn engaging in an after-hours conversation in the verses. Petty spills his guts about this wayward girl that he can’t contain, while Dunn struts around his vocal with jazzy dexterity.

All the while, you can’t help but anticipate the return to that bombastic refrain, and yet you’re surprised when it arrives, announced by Stan Lynch’s sniper snares. When it kicks back in, it is pure rock catharsis. If they write a rock dictionary and include an entry for the quiet-loud dynamic used in so many rock songs, they should skip the lengthy explanation and simply say, “See ‘Woman in Love.’" That’s how it’s done”.

Song 20: “Yer So Bad”
Album: Full Moon Fever

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The laissez-faire, back-porch vibe of the Travelling Wiburys is all over this gem from Full Moon Fever, albeit with a tinge of darkness added by the minor keys creeping in. Give credit to Phil Jones’ amiable thump on the drums for setting the tone, allowing Petty and his buddies to have a little off-the-cuff fun. Even the backing vocals contribute to the familial feeling.

Petty’s sense of humor is all over this one, veering from mischievous (pondering the relative unworthiness of yuppies and singers in the first verse), to gallows (the jilted lover contemplating suicide in the second). You can imagine the band getting a good laugh as Petty brought those lyrics into the studio. Jeff Lynne gets a co-writing credit here, with his apparent contribution being the structuring of the chords to help Petty get from one section of the song to the next.

It all leads up to a catchy chorus that lodges in the brain with rapidity and manages to be heartfelt and unsentimental all at once: “Yer so bad, best thing I ever had/In a world gone mad, yer so bad.” Even the spelling is so wrong that it’s right. “Yer So Bad” sounds like a lark, but the warm glow it emits far outlasts the gentle laughter its punchlines elicit.

Song 19: “Saving Grace”
Album: Highway Companion

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You’d never know that “Saving Grace,” the excellent kick-off song to the 2006 solo album Highway Companion, was the product of three men in the studio. It’s just Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, and Jeff Lynne on the track, and yet it’s as muscular as anything the Heartbreakers might have produced. Maybe these guys should form a power trio somewhere down the line like a modern-day Cream.

Until then we’ll have to settle for this mighty rocker, and it’ll tide us over just fine. Riffing on the blueprint set down by the ZZ Top classic “La Grange,” the guitars really blaze, whether it’s Petty’s 12-string or Campbell’s slide.

But just brawn alone would not be enough to garner a lofty position on such a competitive countdown. Petty coolly soars over the landscape on the vocals, regarding everything he surveys with a mixture of wonder and disgust, and he nails the scene with a few pointed lines: “And it’s hard to say/Who you are these days/But you run on anyway, don’t you baby?”

It’s that gritty resilience that has been a touchstone of Petty’s songwriting rearing its head once more, and it finds a great counterpoint in the blistering rock setting it inhabits here. There might not be much grace on hand, but this song sure does bring the thunder.

Song 18: “You Don’t Know How It Feels”
Album: Wildflowers

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Great songs usually have great beginnings. It’s not a hard and fast rule, I suppose, but, off the top of my head, I can’t think of any exceptions. “You Don’t Know How It Feels” has a killer beginning. Mike Campbell’s amplifier slowly rising into existence, followed by the thudding kick drum of Steve Ferrone, and then Tom Petty’s harmonica whining away above it all. You’re all in at that point, aren’t you?

As if that weren’t enough, the opening lines make you an enticing proposition: “Let me run with you tonight/I’ll take you on a moonlight ride.” This is an offer that’s just impossible to refuse; even when Petty gets to the somewhat defensive refrain, he’s engendered so much goodwill up to that point that you can’t possibly mind.

Of course, if you follow Petty’s advice in the chorus, you might just be too buzzed to care either way. I was tempted to attempt to transcribe what “joint” sounds like backwards in the radio edit of this song, but I’ll leave that for other obsessive types. Anyway, it doesn’t need to be anything subliminal; “You Don’t Know How It Feels” has enough good stuff on its surface to suffice.

Song 17: “Echo”
Album: Echo

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This song has always reminded me of one of Bob Dylan’s sprawling, messy epics from Blood on The Tracks. “Echo” bounces all over the place, its perspectives always changing. Blame is placed and then just as quickly forgiven. Moments of tenderness are interspersed with scenes of rancor. The narrator regrets it all and misses everything seconds later.

But that’s the way it ultimately is in the midst of an imploding relationship. Petty doesn’t need to be linear here; he needs to be honest, and he is, in often nakedly revelatory fashion. And, even though he has been rigorously succinct in the past, this song had to be long. You couldn’t walk away from all this after a 3-minute pop song and say even a fraction of what you needed to say.

It is a beautifully realized performance as well. Howie Epstein reaches down for one of his finest performances on bass, a melodic marvel, even as his own disintegration due to drugs may have crept into Petty’s subconscious and escaped in the lyrics. Note the recurring, circular guitar figure in the refrains, an echo itself that you can’t seem to escape. The vocal is moving, rising from an almost zombiefied detachment into sections where it practically trembles with emotion.

This had to be the title song to the album, really, because it is the perfect encapsulation of it. It’s an album full of hard truths, lessons learned in spite of the characters’ misplaced intentions, no easy answers but lots of broken hearts. I can’t imagine it’s easy for Petty to hear it now, but I think he’s probably glad he said it all.

Song 16: “Runnin’ Down A Dream”
Album: Full Moon Fever

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So “Echo” ran a little long, and this enduring blast off Full Moon Fever also runs on past the 4-minute mark. So what gives, Tom? Well, according to Paul Zollo’s career-spanning interview book Conversations with Tom Petty, Petty claims that he and Jeff Lynne watched in stunned amazement as Mike Campbell blistered through the memorable solo at song’s end in one stunning take, slack-jawed at the brilliance they were seeing and hearing. When it came time to edit the song, Petty couldn’t bring himself to cut out any of the magic his guitarist had given him.

Good choice, Tom. Longevity is just fine if things keep hopping throughout. If anything, that ridiculously great solo leaves us wanting more, the fadeout snapping us out of our blissful trance. It’s the perfect capper to what has come before, a breathless sprint of a song that seems to be the reason why car radios were invented.

From the first blast of Campbell’s unforgettable riff, we’re off and running, as Phil Jones’ keeps a steady, rapid beat for Petty to sing over on his journey. With Del Shannon on the radio, Petty is off on his quest to gather life’s beauty while he may. He’s not going to sit around and wait for that dream to come to him; he’s going to aggressively pursue it.

So I suppose there’s a lesson in there, but the invigorating music teaches it just fine without any lyrics necessary. Just make sure you’ve got a clear stretch of highway in front of you when you pop this track in the CD player. And preferably no state troopers anywhere in the vicinity, because I would guess that “Runnin’ Down A Dream” is one of the leading causes of speeding tickets around.

Song 15: “I Need To Know”
Album: You're Gonna Get It

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In a career full of unbridled energy, “I Need To Know” might be the Heartbreakers at their most gleefully unhinged. Yet the precision of their playing keeps this from being some shambolic mess. For that reason, there are shades of both punk and new wave in the formula, two sounds that were sweeping through the music world in 1978.

But you’ll also hear Petty and the Heartbreakers’ ultimate devotion to their musical forbears in the song’s DNA. In the instrumental break in particular, Mike Campbell’s solo has Chuck Berry written all over it, while Benmont Tench lays down some piano licks that sound like they could have been played by the Killer himself, Jerry Lee Lewis. They can get away with this playfulness because the rhythm section of Ron Blair and Stan Lynch is so locked in tight.

Besides energy, you get a lot of urgency from “I Need To Know.” Petty sings with a ferocity that matches the band’s withering attack. When he lets out that scream prior to the instrumental break, part of it is frustration that fits in with the lyrical theme. But part of it sounds like exultation, the singer reveling in the glorious noise that he and his band have created.

Song 14: “All The Wrong Reasons”
Album: Into the Great Wide Open

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Timeliness has nothing to do with why I have this song ranked so highly here, but it is quite eerie how, twenty years later, it seems so relevant. Maybe the great artists have a kind of second sight about these things, or maybe the human race just keeps falling into the same traps. As Petty’s buddy Bob Dylan famously sang, “God knows when/But you’re doin’ it again.”

Here we have the tale of a family who loses everything overnight. The financial crisis that they face is represented as a “cold, dark wind,” blowing down everything they hold dear. The daughter in this family sees a way out of this by becoming famous: “She made a vow to have it all/It became her new religion.” Sound anything like certain fame-seekers today who are better-noted for their notorious behavior than for any positive contributions to society?

There is an elegant sadness to the proceedings, magnified by the beautiful opening that was created by Mike Campbell doubling the opening guitar riff on a Greek stringed instrument called a bouzouki. Petty narrates the tale dispassionately, refusing to judge these characters he has created. The “reasons” are the ones to blame here, the pressures and influences that lead to the bad choices. That those reasons still exist and are wronger than ever only adds to the mystique of this tune.

Song 13: “Rebels”
Album: Southern Accents

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Petty nearly ended his career over this song, as he shattered his hand by punching a wall in frustration over his inability to nail a proper recording. I can see his point. The drums are way too glossy for the earthiness of the tale, there’s an awkwardness in the return to the chorus at song’s end, and the whole thing lurches from section to section instead of flowing.

Sometimes a song is so good though that it’s hard to damage it too much. “Rebels” is just such a song. From the very first line, Petty creates a character who is defined by his mistakes: “Honey don’t walk out, I’m too drunk to follow.” His voice is all self-deprecating shame in the first verses as he depicts his various misdeeds in hilarious fashion.

But the third verse reveals another side to this guy, as he sings with wounded pride about the grievances he perceives that his forefathers suffered, grievances that affect him acutely in the present day: “Even before my father’s father/They called us all rebels/While they burned our cornfields/And left our cities leveled/I can still feel the eyes of those blue-bellied devils/Yeah, when I’m walkin’ ‘round at night/Through the concrete and metal.”

It’s a brave songwriting stance to take, even though it is just words in the mouth of a character, to depict the North side of the Civil War as the bad guys. The only other time I’ve heard it pulled off well is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by The Band, and even then, the character is filled with more sadness than anger.

But Petty nails it. And when he bursts into that chorus, with the 12-string ringing out alongside him, it’s hard not to get pulled along in the emotion, no matter what part of the country you call home. That’s a significant achievement, and, in the face of that, all technical problems the song might have seem pretty meaningless.

Song 12: “I Won’t Back Down”
Album: Full Moon Fever

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In his younger days, Petty might have written this song quite differently. With the Heartbreakers in tow, he might have cast it as a charged-up rocker, all sound and fury. His voice might have sneered out the title refrain in defiance of anyone who dared to step up and test his mettle.

The beauty of “I Won’t Back Down” is that it keeps that attitude intact but it does so in a much more realistic and profound way. Petty doesn’t sing the verses so much as he states them, very matter-of-fact, as if to say, “This is how it is, and this is how it’s going to be.” His choice of words, though economical, is telling. “Well, I know what’s right/I got just one life.” That really says all you need to know about personal accountability.

The music ambles along in the same unassuming manner. Instead of blasting away with a firecracker solo, Mike Campbell just adds some slide guitar that perfectly fits the mood. Only when the “Hey Baby” part comes up does Petty rise up to a fever pitch for the telling line “There ain’t no easy way out,” a reflection of the difficulties that life is bound to throw at you.

But then it’s right back down to the mantra of the refrain, with good buddy George Harrison seconding that emotion on backing vocals. “I Won’t Back Down” isn’t so much about taking some righteous stand as it is adhering to a certain, unwavering code. It’s about integrity really, and few artists have ever exuded quite as much of that enigmatic quality as Tom Petty.

Song 11: “Refugee”
Album: Damn the Torpedoes

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I know that I have it ranked #11, but I would have to say that Petty has never made a finer recording than “Refugee.” The track just scorches the speakers. Petty spoke in the Runnin’ Down A Dream doc about how producer Jimmy Iovine really worked the band hard to get the right sound for the track. However many man-hours it took, it was damn well worth it.

Mike Campbell came up with the chord pattern, almost sinister in its relentlessness, from which the Heartbreakers built the rest of the song. All of the band members shine, with Stan Lynch’s powerful drums and Benmont Tench’s sneaky organ work deserving special praise. Everything really pops.

Petty, meanwhile, sings the living tar out of the song, as he tries to convince a reticent girl that he won’t cause her the kind of hurt she’s felt in the past. Or, to put it more simply, “Get over yourself, sweetheart.” The unorthodox choice of the word “refugee” was a truly inspired moment, and the “Evereybody’s had to fight to be free” line brings every listener right on board with him. There is not an ounce of waste on “Refugee;” just writing this I’m in disbelief that there are ten better songs, not just from Petty, but from anyone in the world.