Songfacts®:

• In this song, Tom Petty wants to revive a relationship, but he also knows he's a hot mess. That tension plays out in the song as he sings, "I want to make it better girl," but follows it up with "Forget about me."
  
  He wrote the song with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, who told the story in a Songfacts interview. "I was sitting on the side of the bed in Tom's bedroom with Tom," he said. "We had two guitars. Tom was going through a really tough time in his relationship and it was affecting him and the band. It was a buildup to him having a crisis when he punched a hole through the wall and damaged his hand. So it's kind of a frustration song. It's like, I just want to make it better but I don't know how, you know? And the resolution was, maybe forget about me. It was talking about a futile, useless situation that's been tried to be fixed for quite a long time, and it wasn't going to get fixed.
  
  So, we were sitting together on the bed, two guitars, throwing lines at each other and just playing it almost like an acoustic jam. It's kind of a folk-y song in a way, and the two guitars sounded really good."
• "Make It Better (Forget About Me)" was the follow-up single to "Don't Come Around Here No More," which Petty also wrote with Dave Stewart. The Southern Accents album was conceived as a stripped-down set with songs about Petty's roots in Gainesville, Florida. Petty was very proud of the title track, but it wasn't hit-worthy and he had a hard time finishing the album. When Stewart came into the picture, he brought a fresh energy but also took the album away from its core concept. Stewart had hit on a modern sound with Eurythmics that meshed well with the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers vibe. The band had always written their own material, but they quickly warmed up to Stewart, who is very engaging with a true passion for music.
  
  "Don't Come Around Here No More" gave the band the hit they needed to get on the radio and keep filling arenas. "Make It Better" didn't do as well, but the Southern Accents ended up selling over a million copies and got the band back on track.
  
  Petty and Stewart remained good friends and Stewart's Los Angeles home became a hang-out spot for the likes of Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne. In 1988, Petty formed the Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Lynne, and Dylan. They recorded their first album in Stewart's home studio - Stewart couldn't participate because he was busy recording and touring with Eurythmics.
• The music video followed the Alice In Wonderland theme of the "Don't Come Around Here No More" video. It takes place inside Alice's head, where the band performs the song in the surreal landscape of Alice's grey matter.
  
  These were the first big-budget concept videos Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers made. Early on, they had no problem getting on MTV with basic performance videos, but by 1985 the bar was a lot higher. With encouragement from Dave Stewart, who directed many of Eurythmics' videos, they embraced these kind of videos and were rewarded with consistent airplay on MTV, which was thrilled to have a good ol' fashioned American rock band to balance out the pop stars that dominated the network.
• This is one of the few Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs with a horn section. It also has prominent female backing vocals by Julia Waters and Maxine Waters of the gospel-singing Waters family, along with Stephanie Spruill and Clydene Jackson. Spruill also sang on "Don't Come Around Here No More."