BAYveh, VAY-veh, Bay-buh
TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS, "Don’t Do Me Like That" | Damn the Torpedos, 1981
Tom Petty is a master of using “baby” as a crutch — to provide a lyrical flourish between lines and stanzas, or to sprinkle tender or dismissive meaning into the song’s circumstances. He uses “baby” a lot, particularly early in his career. While he often keeps his pronunciations of the word to the minimum two syllables, each version is anything but perfunctory. Here, in “Don’t Do Me Like That,” while fretting that his lover might leave him for another, he sings and sort of slurs three twangy and distinct “babies” in the span of a single second.
