American Girl

Petty wrote it and Denny Cordell produced it at Shelter Studio in Hollywood on July 4, 1976. The single, issued in February 1977, runs 3:35 against 3:33 on the album. Petty played rhythm guitar and sang, Campbell lead and rhythm guitar, Blair bass, Lynch drums and Tench piano and organ, with Phil Seymour on backing vocals. It has a Bo Diddley-style beat, and the 12-string sound is two six-string guitars layered by Petty and Campbell, with Campbell omitting the third in several chords to suggest a horn section; he called Seymour's extended vocal technique the laser vocal. Lynch said everyone knew there was a little lightning in the bottle on that one. Where it was written is contested: Petty told others an apartment beside a freeway in Encino, while Ultimate Classic Rock places it in his Florida apartment on U.S. 441.

Petty said the American girl is just one example of a character he writes about a lot, that the girl was looking for the strength to move on and found it, and that it is one of his favorites. An urban legend tied it to a University of Florida campus tower, which Petty told Paul Zollo was a huge urban myth and just not at all true; Campbell called it a really beautiful love song taken out of context. It reached 40 in the UK in 1977, did not chart in the US at first, reached Bubbling Under 9 on the 1994 Greatest Hits reissue, is UK gold, and Rolling Stone ranked it first of Petty's 50 greatest songs and 169th on its 500. The Strokes' Julian Casablancas said of "Last Nite" that yeah, we ripped it off, and Petty said it made him laugh out loud.

Setlist.fm lists it first with 856 performances of 1,316 setlists, and Campbell said they played it every gig for 40 years. It was the last song of the final Hollywood Bowl show on September 25, 2017. The BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test recorded it in 1978, and the Live Anthology has a May 1983 Cow Palace version at 5:19 (April 13, 1983 per the file). Roger McGuinn covered it on Thunderbyrd (1977), thinking he had written it, and Dierks Bentley covered it in 2024. It is in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Silence of the Lambs. We cannot say which version our upload is.