It’s no secret on this blog that I love Tom Petty and that Wildflowers is my favorite album of his and one of my all time favorite albums period. Several years ago it came to light that Tom Petty had originally recorded Wildflowers as a double album, but his record label at the time didn’t want to release a double album so 10 of the original songs were left on the cutting room floor. I immediately wanted to be able to hear those songs but thought that it was probably never going to come to pass.

For awhile Tom Petty said he had no interest in releasing those songs as a separate album because they were written at a certain time that he was no longer living in and he only wanted his music to keep moving forward. Apparently though as he was doing his 40th Anniversary tour he began planning a project to revisit Wildflowers and bring those songs to light. Obviously he was never able to bring that dream to fruition as he sadly died a few short weeks after ending that tour.

But happily his dream has been brought to life by his daughters Adria and Annakim, his wife Dana and two of the Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell. Today they released Wildflowers & All the Rest a box set that includes remastered versions of the songs on the original album and the 10 songs that were cut from the original album. It also includes early home recordings of some of the songs as well as live versions so that you can get a sense of their evolution.

I immediately skipped to the songs that were cut and haven’t even managed to make it through those yet. There is going to be so much to dig into here. I know what I will be doing this weekend. 2020 isn’t all bad, just mostly. Here’s a YouTube playlist of the 25 album versions of the songs. You’ll have to pop over to somewhere like Spotify to hear the home recordings and live versions or you know do something crazy and buy it.