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road sage

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers perform at Viejas Arena on August 3, 2014 in San Diego, California.Jerod Harris/Getty Images

Tom Petty, the 66-year-old rock icon who passed away this week, created some of the finest road tunes ever recorded. Petty, who sold more than 80 million albums, not only wrote music that was great to drive to, he frequently wrote about driving itself in songs like Turn This Car Around and Runnin' Down a Dream.

The lead singer of Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers was a car buff who owned a 1993 Cadillac Allante and who, in 2012, auctioned off his beloved 1996 Jaguar XJS convertible with proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders. His tunes, ideal for solo sing-alongs in the car, were featured in several films, soundtracking memorable moments in Jerry Maguire, Silence of the Lambs and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, among many others.

Petty's untimely death got me thinking about the nature of road tunes. While many will credit Tom Petty as the king of the subgenre (especially baby boomers), road music is as unique as the driver.

Music inspired by life behind the wheel also springs from the romance of the automobile. Cars are part of the North American dream of individuality – a car lets you go where you want to go, when you want to go, with whom you want to go. The world opens itself up as the road unfurls.

You're either heading toward something you really want or running from something you are desperate to leave behind. "I rolled on as the sky grew dark," Petty sings at the end of Runnin' Down a Dream. "I put the pedal down to make some time. There's something good waitin' down this road. I'm pickin' up whatever's mine."

Today, however, the romance seems to be fading. When the car was first introduced, it was considered a way for working folks who had been trapped in city slums to escape to the fresh air. A guy could buy a car and take his family out into the country. Cars still represent freedom, but they're associated with pollution and climate change, not individuality. Driving used to be a rite of passage, now most drivers in their twenties can't afford to own a car.

It's hard to say where the road tunes of the future will come from. How inspired will musicians be when self-driving vehicles flood the highway? Is the very notion of road tunes bound to disappear as autonomous vehicles eventually flood the roads? Will we get lyrics like, "I get in my car. The robot takes over. It's just like being in my living room except moving and I can see trees."

Tom Petty was a terrifically gifted musician, one who had an innate grasp of the automobile and its place in the North American psyche. In songs such as "Free Fallin'" (inspired by his drives on Ventura Boulevard) he revelled in the duality of the fantasy of the open road. He approached the North American dream of freedom via automobile with a romantic yet skeptical delight. Tom Petty showed us that the highway can lead equally to hope or despair. It's an insight summed up at the end of his most classic road tune.

"I rolled on as the sky grew dark

I put the pedal down to make some time

There's something good waitin' down this road

I'm pickin' up whatever's mine

I'm runnin' down a dream

That never would come to me

Workin' on a mystery, goin' wherever it leads

Runnin' down a dream"

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