Learning To Fly – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Welcome to our first Tune Talk post! We will pick a new song each time to talk about and rate as a family, and of course, invite you to join in the discussion!

As we officially take flight with The Renaissance Road, it felt right to start with the classic song that I mentioned in my very first post. I read somewhere that Petty actually wrote this song while watching the news during the Gulf War. He was inspired by a pilot who mentioned that the flying part was easy—it was the coming back down that was the trick. That thought was clearly captured in the line: “Coming down is the hardest thing.”

Part of the fun of our Tune Talk posts is sitting down and listening to the songs we choose to feature as a family and then giving them our own ratings based on a 1 to 10 scale.

We were pretty in tune on this one! The melody is timeless, the lyrics are catchy, and it has that unmistakable “road trip” feel that we love.

Now it’s your turn: How would you rate this song? Do you have a favorite line in the lyrics? Drop a comment and let us know!