10 Cool Things About ‘Refugee’ by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Refugee (Tom Petty/Mike Campbell)

In no particular order -

1) Extremely economical songwriting:


The Verse is 2 (long) lines; 8 bars long

Pre-Chorus – 2 lines; 4 bars long

Chorus – 1 line (repeated, except for first time)

Bridge – 4 lines; 8 bars long

An 8 bar solo follows all this and barely 2 minutes has gone by!


Add a 3rd Verse, Per-Chorus, Chorus; begin the outvamp and still you’re just hitting 3 minutes!

2) Performed at a faster-than-you-think, -remember, or -expect tempo.

3) 5 chords altogether

4) Verse and Chorus have the same chords (F#minor/AE); Pre-Chorus breaks it up (D/B)

5) In the Pre-Chorus, the ‘B’ chord feels like a V chord, like it’s setting up a ‘E’ chord, but it goes back to the F#minor instead. But then you do get the “E’ chord that I think your ear has been set up to expect when the song hits the Bridge.

6) The lyric is very idiosyncratic in the way it tells the story of the ‘refugee’ and the singer. This is a place where Petty really shows his mastery and confidence. The singer expresses both indifference and caring, bouncing between the contradictions.


(Listen) It don’t really matter to me

Everybody’s had to fight to be free


You see you don’t have to live like a Refugee

7) The rhymes are sometimes precise (see Pre-Chorus above) and other times often very loose:


We got somethin’ we both know it


We don’t talk too much about it


Ain’t no real big secret all the same


Somehow we get around it

But all the lyrics sing in a way that feels natural and right for the style and tone of this song, singer, and story.

8) Repetition of the first 2 lines in the 2nd & 3rd Verses –

Somewhere somehow somebody must have


Kicked you around some

Followed by either –

Tell me why you wanna lay there; revel in your abandon


or –

Who knows maybe you were kidnapped tied up taken away and held for ransom

Great, evocative lines with rhymes that would traditionally be considered weak (or identical), but in this context work like gangbusters.

9) Tremendous one line single-image Chorus

10) Melody jumps up a full octave from the end of the first Verse to the beginning of the Pre-Chorus, upping the ante. The melody stays high throughout the Chorus.

Bonus) Definitively great rock and roll Hammond Organ playing!

Let me know your thoughts, additions, disagreements in the Comments section below or here: http://tonyconniff.com/10-cool-things-about-refugee-by-tom-petty-the-heartbreakers/ (you can also listen to the song at this link)