Tom Petty 'Wildflowers' Releases Take His Legacy To A Higher Place

Tom Petty’s greatest achievement might have been coming off as a regular guy. His laidback persona and accessible catalog made it easy for millions of fans to forge a bond with the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, who would have turned 75 on October 20, 2025.

No artist is for everyone, but almost everyone seemed to have Tom Petty in common. His plainspoken songs appealed to Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials. His vaguely Dylanesque voice could obscure the enunciation of his lyrics, but he didn’t traffic in Bob’s obfuscation. Petty was private, but not enigmatic. He spoke to us because he was one of us — the lovelorn, the heartbroken, and the underdogs. He said it best himself: “Even the losers get lucky sometimes.”

Petty’s death in October 2017 from an accidental drug overdose was a sucker punch. It felt like losing a friend.

People say at such times, “We’ll always have the music.” It’s comforting, as platitudes go. But, sure enough, Petty’s own songs assuaged the grief of his loss.

“I feel like it’s been going on since we lost him, this experience of Tom Petty as, you know, someone we just were not ready to say goodbye to,” says Warren Zanes, author of 2015’s Petty: The Biography, during a recent phone call. “And then to have that experience of, because of this music, we never have to. It pushed people into one of the great American music catalogs, in a slightly different frame of mind. The appreciation for him and for what he left behind and the sense of loss somehow came together and [the Tom Petty Estate] did create a kind of celebratory atmosphere. It feels like it hasn’t really ended since his death.”

Eight years on, fans have a greater understanding of just how much Petty left.

“I think there’s definitely a lot more of an appreciation for what an impact he made on music,” Ryan Ulyate, Petty’s longtime recording engineer, late-career co-producer, and audio archivist, says via Zoom. “His body of work is so expansive. I think people are getting into it more and understanding how deep it is and how deep the roots are.”

The Tom Petty Estate – managed by his widow, Dana Petty, and his daughters, Adria Petty and Annakim Violette Petty – has burnished his legacy with reissues, box sets, compilations, and films that give a wider view of his creative process. They have drawn from various points in Petty’s career, but many, including three this fall, have focused on the album that many fans, critics, and the musician himself considered his best — 1994’s Wildflowers.

“We felt consistently like promoting the good work done behind [Wildflowers], because it is his masterpiece,” Adria Petty, 51, says on Zoom. “It is a craftsman’s masterpiece.”

You Follow Your Feelings

Judging albums is a subjective endeavor, even for the artists themselves. Even Petty thought Wildflowers stood out, though.