What is the song "Free Falling" by Tom Petty about?

it's about a guy that breaks up with his girlfriend for no aparent reaason and that's bad into things such as drugs.so he kills himself by overdosing.

You break-up with a girl and realise (usually when it's too late) that you made a mistake, i.e., you jump from the highs of a relationship and are free (oh great) but then you realise you are really free falling to the hard ground (oh shit).

Well that is how I always felt and that is what I think of when I hear the song.

I heard that you should really just percieve the song how you want, because according to a reliable source... the song was made spontaneously with no real meaning when they made it..

so interperate it how you'd like.

i liek to see it as a song about a "bad boy" who had a "good girl" and was constantly breaking her heart because he was mixed up with the wrong people.. and he broke it off with her, and didnt miss her. but in the end realizes hes wrong and that he loves her. (hence: i want to write your name in the sky" --thats rather loving).

I agree with a number of the above answers that people wrote what they think the song is about. I think it is about a guy who defines himself or society does, as "a bad boy"...and he dates and breaks up with different girls all the time like one after another...he breaks their hearts...but then he finds this one girl where this time he realizes he was falling for her - this "good girl". But he is mixed up in the drug world with the "wrong people"...and he is mixed up with addiction. When he uses the word "vampires" he says the part about vampires on the boulevard....that means drug addicts hanging out. When he is free falling..he was high feeling good from love or maybe addiction with sex and / or drugs...but when he says free falling...he is talking again about going high in his spirits how he feels but hitting the ground with a thud to realize he is failing again...because he is breaking the girl's heart, and being involved in the world he lives in he can't deal with responsibility so he escapes back into the drug world....when he says, "Gonna leave this world for a while." He knows what the "good girls" want but because he is the "bad boy" he can't deal with responsibilities because he is in the drug world....so he clocks out. I don't think in the song he overdoses, like the way one responder on here wrote....I think basically it means he just gets high again escaping into drugs. He goes off somewhere to score drugs. It is like being emotionally wrecked...on a emotional roller coaster. And I think in the song when he says "and I don't even miss her." He doesn't miss other girls because he is caught up in addiction and his relationship with that is stronger than his relationship with a woman....and he knows that inside himself, his own shortcomings / failures....so he is crying on the inside because he realizes too late this was the girl...she was the one....he wants "to write her name in the sky." On the inside he goes from feeling high from the girls (the pleasure of female attention or sex) because he is like narcistic but when he knows he can't be what the "good girl" wants and causes heartbreak (he can't be the "good guy" because emotionally he is not strong enough because of addiction....he also feels emotional pain....because he knows he is failing again. I think it is a excellent song. I love Tom Petty's music. He is highly talented. He writes many of his songs like a poet. I think being a song writer is one of if not, the coolest job anyone can have.

who wrote free falling

As per Mike Campbell (Heartbreaker's Guitarist) "the lyrics deal with Los Angeles culture, mentioning actual places in the area: Reseda, Mulholland and Ventura Boulevard. It implies that the people of L.A. will casually use others for personal gain, as the singer has just dumped a girl and doesn't even miss her".

How appropriate.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2898