Tom Petty wrote “Wildflowers” in one sitting. In his own telling, he took a deep breath and the whole song came out at once, words, music and chords together; he played it into a tape recorder, never played it again, and for days kept going back to the tape, suspicious because it had come so easily, before deciding nothing was wrong with it. It opened Wildflowers, the solo album he made with producer Rick Rubin for Warner Bros., released on 1 November 1994. On the recording Petty sang and played acoustic guitar, with Mike Campbell on bass and harpsichord, Benmont Tench on piano and harmonium, Steve Ferrone on drums and Lenny Castro on percussion, and an orchestral part arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen.
The lyric is addressed to someone the singer cares for. It tells them they belong among the wildflowers, out on a boat at sea, somewhere they feel free; it urges them to go off somewhere bright and new and find a lover, says no one else compares with them, and in its last verse places that free place close to the singer, away from trouble and worry.
Petty wrote it while his marriage of more than twenty years was coming apart. When he later played it for his therapist and was asked who the song was about, he said he was not sure; the therapist told him it was about Petty himself, and he admitted the realization “kind of knocked me back.” The song was not issued as a single in 1994. A home recording of it came out as a digital single on 20 August 2020, three years after Petty’s death, ahead of the expanded Wildflowers & All the Rest, and it reached number 16 on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart.
The Wailin’ Jennys had sung it in concert for years before recording it in February 2017 for Fifteen, their fifteenth-anniversary album of covers, released that October on Red House; the three singers trade the lead on it. After Petty died in October 2017, other musicians played it in his memory. Trampled by Turtles, regrouping at banjo player Dave Carroll’s cabin shortly after his death, played it live on Facebook, and Chris Stapleton and Emmylou Harris sang it as a tribute to him at the 60th Grammy Awards in January 2018.
