Music / Song Review

You Need to Listen to this Song Right Now #52

Heavy Rotation — Jammin’ Me, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough, 1987)

Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got incessant airplay. It referred to the large number of rotations that a particular record was given on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales — good for record companies and artists alike.

Today, some people still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, just in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way we think it works.

For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that I come back to from time to time, and it still feels just as good. This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.

My aim is to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. It’s good to know a bit about the band, a bit about where the song fits into its history, and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at, and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in our lives?

I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read this than the song itself. To that end, I put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I stick a live clip on at the end.

What song is in your head right now? Here’s the one that won’t leave mine today:

#52 — Jammin’ Me, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough, 1987)

In the mid-80s, Tom Petty was big, but not huge. Or, at least, not as huge as he’d get.

With the Heartbreakers, he put out six albums between 1976 and 1985. Out of Gainesville, Florida, they were known for their honest to God, Southern Fried, rock n’ roll live show that featured such chart-toppers as “Refugee”, “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” “Here Comes My Girl,” and “Don’t Do Me Like That.”

But by 1987, things seemed to be on a downward trajectory for the Heartbreakers.

Petty’s solo career was about to go stratospheric with “Full Moon Fever” in 1989. Oh, in between that and the last Heartbreakers album, he also involved himself in a little side project / legendary supergroup known as the Travelling Wilburys, along with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.

Tom was doing just fine at that point, and “Free Fallin,” “Handle Me With Care,” and “I Won’t Back Down” have been classic rock radio staples since then, much like his Heartbreakers output, since his far too soon passing in 2017.

Jammin’ Me from 1987's “Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough” is a return to form in some ways and a foreshadowing of the upcoming heights he would hit in others.

Two things appeal to me every time I hear this song: One is how it comes out of the blocks quickly and sets down a catchy four-chord groove on rhythm guitar courtesy of Mike Campbell on the Rickenbacker and a sort of rollicking honky tonk piano flavour by Benmont Tench that wouldn’t have been out of place on early 70s Rolling Stones records.

The second is that the lyrics speak to the overwhelming nature of the news, media, advertising, celebrity, and TV that people felt deluged by in the mid-80s. The name of the album that this song comes from attests to that. And as a matter of fact, if one were to take out a few of the references that people in the 80s would have understood but that have been forgotten, and replace them with Elon Musk and Donald Trump and all of the nonsense that goes with those kinds of people, then this track would still make perfect sense today.

But I guess there’s a third thing. And it’s Petty’s unmistakable voice. Nobody sounds like him. You automatically know who this song is by, and I love how he adds a little sneer into his delivery, much like the one we see here on the cover of Heartbreakers' debut album.

Off we go at 00:05 of the video with an unfancy but emphatic drum groove, a whirling Hammond organ, and the raw 4-chord progression of the guitar. You get the piano clearest for the first time at 00:18.

And there’s that voice at 00:21. “You got me in a corner / You got me against the wall / I got nowhere to go / I got nowhere to fall”. He’s had it. There is no escape from this idiocy coming at him.

A little cowbell doesn’t hurt, either.

“Take back your acid rain, baby / Let your TV bleed / You’re jammin’ me.” He doesn’t want it or need it, and he sure didn’t ask for it. So far, that sounds pretty familiar to us today, describing the endless “information” we are subjected to.

And despite this, there is joy, exuberance, and a drive in the music as if to say, you are not going to beat me down with this, and here’s my middle finger to go with it. Maybe it’s something like, “I’ll stand my ground / And I won’t back down.”

The second part of the second verse at 1:39 has got to be my favourite part of this song, referencing mid-80s household names and asking, why am I forced to care about these people? “Take back Eddie Murphy / take back Joe Piscopo / take back Vanessa Redgrave / give ’em all some place to go.”

Most of us would probably have a good idea of who one of them is and a vague recollection of the other two. Which of the idiots that fill our mediaspheres today will be remembered in 30 years?

“Take back your Iranian torture / And the Apple in young Steve’s eye / Take back your losing streak / Check your front wheel drive.” Nobody remembers the first phrase, and the second apparently references Steve Jobs. The third is about professional sports, and the last is about advertising.

And how none of those things mean anything.

You can turn off your TV all you like, go ahead and cover up your ears, and go and live in a cabin in the woods. There is no escaping this stuff. But throw on a little TP and the HBs, and it all feels a little better to know that somebody else feels the same way as you.

Here they are at the top of their game, live in Minneapolis in 1997.

If you have made it this far, it will occur to you that if this is #52 in this series, then there must be 51 previous ones. This is a correct assumption, and here I will link #51. At the bottom of it, you will find a link to #50, and at the bottom of that, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #49. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1.

I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month, and if you use the link below, then I get a slice of that. Quit jammin’ me.