Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - American Girl Lyrics

"American Girl" is a rock song written by Tom Petty and recorded by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for their self-titled debut album in 1976. It was released as a single and did not chart in the United States, but peaked at No. 40 in the UK for the week ending August 27, 1977. It was re-released in 1994 as the second single from Petty's Greatest Hits album and peaked at No. 68 in the U.S. Cash Box Top 100.

Despite limited chart success, "American Girl" became one of Petty's most popular songs and a staple of classic rock. It has been consistently rated as his best song, only surpassed by "Free Fallin'" otherwise, and one of the best rock songs of all time, and has been called "more than a classic rock standard — it's practically part of the American literary canon." It has also been used in several movies and television shows, often during a scene in which a character, much like the protagonist in the song's lyrics, is "longing for something bigger than their current existence."

Due to lyrics about a desperate girl on a balcony hearing "cars roll by out on 441," the song has long been rumored to be about a college student who committed suicide by jumping from the Beaty Towers residence hall at the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville. The 160 feet (49 m) dormitory is located on the edge of campus alongside US Route 441 and opened in 1967, when Petty was a teenager living across town.

While the university did not historically keep records of on-campus suicides, a UF spokesman asserted that no one has died by jumping from Beaty Towers, which would be a difficult endeavor since the building has narrow unopenable windows but no balconies, and that Petty himself refuted the story when asked in person during a 2006 visit.

In the book Conversations with Tom Petty, the musician stated that the supposed tragic origin of the song was simply an urban legend:
"It's become a huge urban myth down in Florida. That's just not at all true. The song has nothing to do with that. But that story really gets around... They've really got the whole story. I've even seen magazine articles about that story. "Is it true or isn't it true?" They could have just called me and found out it wasn't true."

In the same interview, Petty explained that he wrote the song while living in California:
"I was living in an apartment where I was right by the freeway. And the cars would go by. In Encino, near Leon Russell's house. And I remember thinking that that sounded like the ocean to me. That was my ocean. My Malibu. Where I heard the waves crash, but it was just the cars going by. I think that must have inspired the lyric."

"American Girl" was the last song performed in concert by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. They played it to close out the encore of their performance on September 25, 2017, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, the final concert of their 40th Anniversary Tour. Petty died of complications from cardiac arrest after an accidental prescription medication overdose on October 2, just over a week later.

It is ranked number 169 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.