The album was a breakthrough for Petty and the Heartbreakers. It was their first top 10 album, rising to No. 2 for seven weeks and kept from No. 1 by
Pink Floyd's
The Wall on the
Billboard albums chart. Tom Petty's response to Westwood One about being anchored at No. 2 was "I love Pink Floyd but I hated them that year." It yielded two songs that made the top 15 on the
Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, "Don't Do Me Like That" (No. 10) and "Refugee" (No. 15). Thanks to the new co-producer
Jimmy Iovine,
Damn the Torpedoes proved to be a major leap forward in production.
Village Voice critic
Robert Christgau said, "This is a breakthrough for Petty because for the first time the Heartbreakers ... are rocking as powerfully as he's writing. But whether Petty has any need to rock out beyond the sheer doing of it—whether he has anything to say—remains shrouded in banality. Thus he establishes himself as the perfect rock and roller for those who want good—very good, because Petty really knows his stuff—rock and roll that can be forgotten as soon as the record or the concert is over, rock and roll that won't disturb your sleep, your conscience, or your precious bodily rhythms." and the 2020 edition ranked it at number 231. In 2000, it was voted number 537 in
Colin Larkin's
All Time Top 1000 Albums.
Re-releases The album was digitally remastered by Joe Gastwirt and reissued in 2001 on
HDCD. On November 9, 2010, a deluxe edition of the album was released on three formats, a 2×CD set, a 2×LP (180 g) deluxe package and a Blu-ray Audio disc package. Digital download available in numerous audio codecs in audiophile quality 96 kHz/24bit through resellers such as HDTracks. All the tracks (original and unreleased) were remastered from the original analog master tapes by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering Studios in Hollywood. ==Track listing==