Summary

The author reflects on the summer of 1980 in North Texas, using the song "Even the Losers" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as a soundtrack to navigate the challenges of adolescence and the transition into high school during a record-breaking heatwave.

Abstract

The article recounts the author's personal experience during the sweltering summer of 1980 in North Texas, a period marked by both extreme weather and significant personal change. As the author entered high school, they grappled with the social upheaval of moving from a small junior high to a larger Catholic high school, feeling like an outsider. Music, particularly Tom Petty's "Even the Losers," provided solace and a sense of hope amidst the struggles of fitting in and finding one's place in the world. The song resonated deeply, offering comfort and the promise that even those feeling down on their luck could find moments of success and maintain their dignity.

Opinions

The author views the song "Even the Losers" as an anthem for the underdog, providing a sense of camaraderie and encouragement to those feeling marginalized or overlooked.
High school is depicted as a hierarchical environment where freshmen often find themselves at the bottom, a sentiment echoed by the author's own experiences.
Tom Petty is portrayed as a punk rock figure who understood and articulated the emotions of his listeners, giving voice to their feelings of alienation and hope.
The author believes that the experience of feeling like a loser is universal, transcending age, social status, and other differences, and that Petty's song captures this shared human experience.
The article suggests that music has the power to transcend current circumstances, offering comfort and perspective during challenging times.
The author expresses gratitude towards Tom Petty for his music and its impact on their life, as well as towards Jessica Lee McMillan for initiating the Riff Summer Challenge and her contributions to surf rock.

RIFF SUMMER CHALLENGE

Getting Lucky in a Record Heatwave

And a Gone Gator Shall Lead Them

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Image source: TomPetty.com)

For those who lived through it, the summer of 1980 in North Texas will forever be remembered as the summer of The Heat Wave. Much like what the Pacific Northwest is suffering through today it was an anomaly, even for a place used to blistering summers. The summer of 1980 broke or tied 29 daily records, and we had 69 days above 100 degrees, 42 of them consecutive. Yeah, 100+ degrees for a month-and-a-half straight.

The summer of 1980 was a big deal for me on a non-meteorological front as well; it was the summer between the end of junior high and the start of my freshman year. If you’re brave enough to cast your mind back to those days, you may remember them as the transition from being the Big Shit as part of the alpha pack of junior high (by age if nothing else) to being simply, well, shit. Freshmen, especially in that first semester, are about as low in the social hierarchy as the Secretary of the Interior is at Cabinet meetings.

I was no exception. I got the very slightest of passes by playing on the freshman basketball team, but not much (we went 3–27 that year). I moved from a Catholic junior high with a class of like 15 kids I’d known my whole life to the only Catholic high school in the county, which was a culture shock size-wise alone. It was that summer I also learned that I came from the very wrong side of the tracks, a fact that had never even crossed my mind before.

This isn’t a John Hughes teen-angst tale of woe, though (well maybe a little). Because Texas summers last well into November, I often associate summer with school, and that summer of 1980 especially. What got me through that late summer of freshman hell? Music, of course, and one song in particular:

“Even the Losers” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

If you have read any of my stuff before, I’ll give you a moment to recover from the shock that it wasn’t Springsteen and “Born to Run.” “Born to Run” was there of course; it had been since I was 9 years old and will be there at the end (my family has instructions for my casket to leave the doors of the church at the exact moment of the final “tramps like us”). But while “Born to Run” spoke to my always, in the summer of ’80 “Even the Losers” spoke to my now:

Baby, even the losers get lucky sometimes Even the losers keep a little bit of pride They get lucky sometimes

Losers. For all the lofty words about forming well-rounded citizens with curious and creative minds, that first part of high school is designed specifically to say: “Welcome to life on the cusp of adulthood. You’re a loser. Know your place. Deal with it.”

Tom Petty, in that special way only a long-haired punk with a guitar from Florida could, gave a simple reply to that: fuck you.

Make no mistake, Tom was a punk. He didn’t put safety pins in his face or fight fans at CBGB or confine himself to only three chords, but he was a punk in the best sense of the word. He got us. From “Insider” to “Woman in Love” to “Straight into Darkness” he took our pain and gave it words and a melody and a beat (why is Stan Lynch never mentioned among the world’s greatest drummers?), and never better than with “Even the Losers:”

Well, it was nearly summer we sat on your roof Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon And I’d show you stars you never could see Baby, it couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me

Baby, time meant nothing, anything seemed real Yeah, you could kiss like fire and you made me feel Like every word you said was meant to be No, it couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me

Baby, even the losers get lucky sometimes Even the losers keep a little bit of pride They get lucky sometimes

Two cars parked on the overpass Rocks hit the water like broken glass I should have known right then it was too good to last God, it’s such a drag when you’re livin’ in the past

Baby, even the losers get lucky sometimes Even the losers keep a little bit of pride They get lucky sometimes*

Sure, it was about a lost relationship in the overall context of the song, which was sadly reassuring in itself at 15, but the chorus went (and still goes) so much farther. You may be sitting alone at lunch, but you won’t always be. You may be harassed non-stop by asshole seniors, but time will fix that pecking order. You may have been friend-zoned by the girl who is the only one you could ever possibly love, but that’s okay because she really isn’t.

Even the losers get lucky sometimes…

My favorite Petty song (from one of my favorite albums, Damn the Torpedoes) has taught me something else in the decades since the summer of 1980 that the kid I was would never have believed. The song resonates because we are all losers. Whether you’re the most overlooked kid at school or the most popular jock, at some point we all feel like losers. We put on masks and put up fronts, but alone in the still of the night all of us have those moments where we feel like losers.

With “Even the Losers,” Petty didn’t give us some bullshit feel-good platitude that we’re really not losers. We are, but we won’t always be. What was true in the summer of 1980 is true in the summer of 2021: even losers get lucky sometimes, and sometimes lucky is good enough.

*Lyrics by Tom Petty, retrieved from azlyrics.com.

Thanks to Jessica Lee McMillan for the Riff Summer Challenge and for an awesome surf rock series.