"You Don't Know How It Feels" is a song and the lead single from American musician Tom Petty's 1994 album, Wildflowers. The track features candid lyrics describing the songwriter's desire for personal and professional autonomy.[6] The single reached No. 1 on the US BillboardAlbum Rock Tracks chart, No. 3 on the Canadian RPM 100 Hit Tracks chart, and No. 13 on the BillboardHot 100, becoming Petty's last top-40 hit in the US. An alternate version was posthumously released on June 26, 2020.[7] This version peaked at No. 54 on the iTunes chart.[8]
MTV, VH1, and many radio stations aired a censored version of "You Don't Know How It Feels," taking the word "roll" out of "let's roll another joint", as well as a version that played the word "joint" backwards. A version replacing the word "roll" with "hit" was also made.[9] The music video won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video in 1995. The actress in the video is Raven Snow; she also appeared in several episodes of Zalman King's Red Shoe Diaries and the film Delta of Venus as lounge singer Leila.
Petty originally intended the B-side of the single, "Girl on LSD", to appear on Wildflowers, but Warner Bros. refused because it was too controversial.[6] In the song Petty sings about being in love with multiple girls on different drugs: marijuana, cocaine, LSD, beer, crystal meth, china white (a slang term for heroin) and coffee and being a drug dealer. In the chorus Petty states: "Through ecstasy, crystal meth and glue / I found no drug compares to you / All these pills, all this weed / I dunno just what I need."
