Music Notes

Runnin' Down a Dream

My fourteenth track is from the late Tom Petty, released in 1989. Running Down a Dream has been a favorite of mine for a while. I remember when Mom would play it when I was a kid and I thought it was saying "right down the drain…" The lines about "working on a mystery" always excited me, like it was a song from a movie or something.

Finding it was from Tom Petty (during my musical "coming of age") seemed perfectly natural, because I'd known it already for so long. It's a good song to put on as you're driving, because the lyrics are about chasing the dream, adventure seeking, and quite literally driving down the highway enjoying life.

The intricacies of the melody are fun to get lost in, and the beat is surprisingly rapid. I found the Wikipedia   description of the song's composition to be enlightening, as much as is possible for me, lacking musical training.

It embarrasses me sometimes, that I love to write about music yet I have no real understanding of music theory. I describe songs as best I can, having picked up the vocabulary from reading countless professional critiques and artist interviews, and I take it all with obsessive seriousness.

Sometimes I wonder if I should become a musician. If I did, I'd be starting pretty late in a highly competitive field. My chances of being even a fraction as successful as the artists I admire are slim to none. If I did learn an instrument, it would be merely for my own personal enjoyment or perhaps to create something for a YouTube channel…

Anyway, here's a classic for you

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