2000s
The Petty Archives

The Last DJ (2002)
By Marc Weingarten
Entertainment Weekly #677 - October 11, 2002

Apparently, Tom Petty needed to work himself into an indignant lather to produce his most consequential songs in years. The Last DJ is basically an album-length rant about greed and corruption in the music biz. Okay, so that's not exactly a news flash, but Petty's droll wit and the Heartbreakers' empathetic playing make tracks like "Money Becomes King" and "Can't Stop the Sun" about as entertaining as polemical pop music can be. And the expansive arrangements give "The Last DJ" a pleasant, Beatles-flavored kick. A-