FREE FALLIN'

"'Free Fallin'" is the opening track from Tom Petty's 1989 solo album, ''Full Moon Fever''. The song was written by Petty and his writing partner for the album, Jeff Lynne. The song was released as a single, and was a top 10 U.S. hit in January, 1990. It also topped the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
Considered to be one of the more introspective songs in Petty's body of work, "Free Fallin'" uses a simple acoustic riff coupled with offbeat lyrics. The song has an easy, mid-tempo acoustic rock structure, and features Petty's signature vocal style. It has become one of his most popular solo songs.

Contents

Lyrics

Inspiration

Trivia

Lyrics

She's a good girl, loves her mama
loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
loves horses and her boyfriend too
It's a long day livin' in Reseda
there's a freeway runnin' through the yard
and I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart
Chorus
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
All the vampires walkin' through the valley
move west down Ventura Blvd.
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts
I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for awhile
The lyrics describe a relationship between a "good girl" and a "bad boy." The "good girl" loves Jesus and horses, while the "bad boy" breaks her heart and doesn't even miss her, though some of the later lyrics suggest that he has not gotten over her. Imagery of the Los Angeles area is evident throughout the song, with references to:

★ Reseda - a neighborhood of Los Angeles

★ "The valley" - the San Fernando Valley, in which Reseda is located

★ Ventura Boulevard - a primary east-west thouroughfare in the San Fernando Valley

★ "Mulholland" - a reference to Mulholland Drive, a well-known road in Los Angeles

Inspiration

In interviews, Petty says the song was written after a roadie purchased a keyboard that Tom did not particularly care for. The roadie told Petty that if he wrote one song on it, that it would pay for itself. Petty ended up writing "Free Fallin'" on the keyboard, and played the opening riff for Jeff Lynne, his producer. "Just to make Jeff smile I sang 'She's a good girl, loves her mama' and from there I wrote the first and second verses completely spontaneously," Petty said.
Axl Rose once asked Tom how he came up with the line about vampires to which Tom replied, "When I'm driving, sometimes I see these shadowy-looking people just off the sidewalks, around the post office. I always thought of them as vampires for some reason."

Trivia

★ A modified version of the opening verse was used in the Propaghandi song "White, Proud, Stupid."

★ The song was covered by Petty's friend, Stevie Nicks on the ''Party of Five'' TV soundtrack and included in her 1998 box set, ''Enchanted: the Works of Stevie Nicks''.

★ De La Soul sampled the track for "Fallin" (1994).

★ The song has been covered by Keith Urban, Death Cab For Cutie, and many other mainstream artists in concert.

★ The song has been sampled by rapper Pimp C for his song "I'm Free" off his 2006 album ''Pimpalation''.

★ The song has been featured in the soundtrack to the television show, ''Party of Five'' and the movie, ''Jerry Maguire''.

★ The iconic video for "Free Fallin'" featured vert skateboarding star Mark "Gator" Rogowski and his girlfriend Brandi McClain.

★ A Mya song, also called "Free Fallin'", contains an altered version of the original chorus: "She's been free...free fallin'". It is sung basically the same way as in the original song.

★ Free Fallin' is on the List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

★ Tom Petty performed Free Fallin with Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses at MTV Video Music Award in 1989

★ An instrumental sample was used in an episode of ER entitled Freefall, which has an incident involving a helicopter that plummets off a rooftop and literally "freefalls" down the building creating a huge disaster at the hospital.

★ Korean-American R&B singers Taebin and Teddy covered the song for their record labels (YG Entertainment) album ''YG Family 2'' in 2002. However instead of a normal cover, the main verses were re-written into rap verses (in Korean) and the chorus altered slightly. The title remained the same. The song was not released as a single.

★ The song is prominently featured in ''Jerry Maguire'', when Tom Cruise cranks it up in his car and sings at the top of his lungs.