Taylor Swift Remembers Tom Petty's 'Complex Simplicity'

(Radio.com) Count Taylor Swift among the countless musicians paying tribute to rock legend Tom Petty in the wake of his death last week. Swift spoke to Rolling Stone about Petty's tremendous influence on her.

"To me, Tom Petty represented a kind of songwriting I idolized: complex simplicity," she revealed. "It said so much in the lyrics, the concepts, the stories, the message, the nuances � but always brought you back to a hook that got stuck in everyone's head. He motivated thousands of guitarists to learn to play just because they wanted to be able to play 'Free Fallin." Count me as one of them."

Swift famously covered Petty's timeless 1977 single, "American Girl," releasing it as a single and performing it on her Fearless tour in 2009. Check it out here.

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