"Mary Jane's Last Dance" (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)

Tom Petty is the kind of artist that slips off your radar sometimes.  But when you start naming off the slew of songs he's penned, it hits you how prolific a songwriter he is and how consistently he's produced sturdy, tuneful rock & roll for 30+ years now.
"Mary Jane's Last Dance" (not "Last Dance with Mary Jane," as half the world on the Internet might lead you to believe) from the band's 1993 Greatest Hits album is, to me, one of his most "perfectly Petty" tracks.  It melds his penchant for Rust Belt Americana, memorable riffs that feel equally indebted to Roger McGuinn and Neil Young, hellaciously catchy hooks, and a "this is me, take it or leave it" tossed-off charm into one cohesive whole.
As an aside, I rarely consult the site SongFacts.com when I do my research.  Mainly because most of the "facts" come from random people posting complete crap.  (Jennifer Lopez is not the daughter of folk singer Trini Lopez, for instance.)  However, the site will occasionally post real interviews with musicians, conducted by SongFacts staffers.  
One particular 2003 interview with The Heartbreakers' lead guitarist Mike Campbell (one of Petty's perennial secret weapons) sheds some light on how "Mary Jane's Last Dance" came to life.
According to Campbell, Petty came up with a rough version of the song in Campbell's garage during the sessions that produced Full Moon Fever (1989), Petty's first solo album.  At the time, Petty called the song "Indiana Girl," and it was primarily about a sheltered Midwestern girl who decides to leave home.  
Years passed, and Petty still had the riff kicking around in his head.  So during the sessions for his second solo project, Wildflowers (1994), producer Rick Rubin had him put the song on tape.  Rubin and Campbell liked it well enough, but Petty wasn't convinced the chorus (Hey, Indiana girl / go out and find the world) was going to cut it.  A week later, Petty came back with revised lyrics and the now famous chorus with its ambiguous imagery, which could be about sepia memories of juvenile heartbreak or just a flat-out ode to marijuana.  (However, I've always interpreted the song as a metaphor for someone who starts dabbling in harder drugs and is falling, deeper and deeper, into that vortex.  Read the full lyrics to see what I mean--especially the stanza that begins There's pigeons now on Market Square.  It has a really ominous feel.)
Whatever your interpretation, you can't deny Campbell and Petty's Crazy Horse-esque twin guitar crunchfest--especially Petty's raunchy solos in the middle and end of the song.