"Yer So Bad" is a song co-written and recorded by

Tom Petty Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950October 2, 2017) was an American musician who was the lead vocalist and guitarist of the rock band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, was a member of the lat ...

. It was released in 1990 as the fifth single from his first solo album ''

Full Moon Fever ''Full Moon Fever'' is the debut solo studio album by Tom Petty, released on April 24, 1989, by MCA Records. It features contributions from members of his band the Heartbreakers, notably Mike Campbell, as well as Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison (who di ...

''.

Content

It tells from the singer's viewpoint about his greedy sister being lucky enough to marry a

yuppie Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neu ...

, then got divorced and took the yuppie for all he was worth in the proceedings and is now a swinger dating another singer while her ex-husband is unable to find a new partner, is possibly bankrupt and is contemplating suicide ("head in the oven"). In both verses, the singing brother of the sister cannot decide which is worse but is sure what happened to his ex-brother in law will not ever happen to him because the singer has "you to save me" and that "in a world gone mad, yer so bad".

Music video

In the music video for this song, the sister and yuppie (played by

Charles Rocket Charles Adams Claverie (August 28, 1949 – October 7, 2005), known by stage names Charlie Hamburger, Charlie Kennedy and Charles Rocket, was an American actor, comedian, musician, and television news reporter. He was a cast member on ''Saturda ...

) are shown at their

wedding reception A wedding reception is a party usually held after the completion of a marriage ceremony as hospitality for those who have attended the wedding, hence the name reception: the couple ''receive'' society, in the form of family and friends, for t ...

with Petty as the photographer, then dissolves to two

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

(?)

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hauling the resisting husband out of their marital house while he tries unsuccessfully to take as many possessions that he can to his car that he drives off in and dissolves to a ''

National Enquirer The ''National Enquirer'' is an American tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1926, the newspaper has undergone a number of changes over the years. The ''National Enquirer'' openly acknowledges that it pays sources for tips, a common practice in tabl ...

''-type newspaper with a front-page article about it in bold print

block letter Block letters (known as printscript, manuscript, print writing or ball and stick in academics) are a sans-serif (or "gothic") style of writing Latin script in which the letters are individual glyphs, with no joining. Elementary education in Eng ...

s called "CHEATING HUSBAND'S HEAD EXPLODES", then later dissolves to a bar where the wife, apparently a singer herself, is laughing and flirting with the band's drummer, who later goes home with her to the former yuppie couple's luxurious spacious house. The expelled husband, after driving down the Los Angeles (?) freeway, checks into a cheap motel across town where he opens a metal briefcase revealing a

blow up doll A sex doll (also love doll, fuck doll or blowup doll) is a type of anthropomorphic sex toy in the size and shape of a sexual partner. The sex doll may consist of an entire body, or just a head, pelvis, or other body part (vagina, anus, mouth, pe ...

that he is inflating as his new artificial "companion". A construction scene appears with a new house being built and a construction worker wearing a T-shirt that says "DIE YUPPIE SCUM" while

sumo is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a ''rikishi'' (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a circular ring (''dohyō'') or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by thr ...

-like men are shown dancing on the house's construction site, each carrying a 12-inch

LaserDisc The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...

in their hands. The video later dissolves to the ex-husband driving in his convertible with his blow-up doll next to him in the front seat, trying to keep it seated in heavy traffic, and ends by showing him walking down the street carrying the doll in public.

Reception

"Yer So Bad" was named one of Petty's 50 best songs by ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' magazine, calling it "Petty at his most caustically hilarious".

Charts

References

External links

Yer So Bad music video at YouTube
Tom Petty songs 1990 songs 1990 singles Songs written by Tom Petty Songs written by Jeff Lynne Song recordings produced by Jeff Lynne MCA Records singles {{1990s-rock-song-stub