Don't Do Me Like That
by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
- 116
- BPM
- C major
- Key
- 8B
- Camelot
- 77
- Danceability
- 14
- Acousticness
Tom Petty nearly gave "Don't Do Me Like That" to somebody else. He wrote it, cut a demo with his earlier band Mudcrutch in 1974, and later thought the song suited The J. Geils Band and strongly considered handing it over. During the Damn the Torpedoes sessions producer Jimmy Iovine talked him into keeping it, sensing a hit.
The hunch was right. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released it on November 5, 1979, as the lead single from the album. It is the band's only solo song in the Billboard Hot 100 top 10. Later they went to number three when they backed Stevie Nicks on "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around". In Canada it did better, peaking at number three.
The UK was a different story. Capital Radio played it in the summer of 1980, but it never made the Top 75. The Fort Worth Star Telegram ranked it the fourth best single of 1979. The US single carried "Casa Dega" on the B-side.
Don't Do Me Like That runs at 116 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.07 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 517 ms. It is in C major, Camelot 8B, which shares its notes with A minor and mixes cleanly with F major and G major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.