My Special Award goes to a man who spent most of his life writing and performing rock and rock genre related music. An American multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch, and was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.
Petty recorded a number of hit singles with the Heartbreakers and as a solo artist. In his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He and the Heartbreakers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Petty died at the age of 66, of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, one week after the completion of the Heartbreakers' 40th anniversary tour.
Throughout his career, he set out to write and produce, and ultimately perform, deceptively simple and catchy songs, predominately based around the electric guitar. His fragile sounding voice became instantly recognisable, and he worked with some of the biggest names in music, including Stevie Nicks, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison to name just a few.
We will never know what other great songs we have lost, but here is one of his most popular for you to listen to and, no doubt, singalonga to.