Songfacts®:

• Mike Campbell, guitarist for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, wrote the music for "Jammin' Me" and gave Tom Petty the demo. Tom held it for a while and didn't do anything with it until one day when he was working with Bob Dylan. They came up with some lyrics by picking words out of a newspaper and off the television. Tom pulled out Mike's demo and they inserted those words over the track. The song is about the deluge of information and marketing messages that can prove overwhelming.
• "Jammin' Me" was the first single and biggest hit from Let Me Up (I've Had Enough), the seventh album from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Petty produced the album with Mike Campbell, who co-wrote a total of five songs on the album with Petty. Many of Petty's songs start as demos written by Campbell, who also wrote the music for Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" and "The Heart Of The Matter."
• In 1986, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers toured with Bob Dylan in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, which led to Dylan's contribution on this song. In 1988, Petty and Dylan played together in The Traveling Wilburys, a band whose other members were Jeff Lynne, George Harrison and Roy Orbison.
• In the lyrics, Petty mentions various people, places and things that were in the news and getting lots media exposure, listing them off as items to "take back." That list includes insurance, acid rain, angry slander and El Salvador - it's very random. The three people mentioned are packed into this section:
  
  Take back Vanessa Redgrave
  Take back Joe Piscopo
  Take back Eddie Murphy
  Give 'em all someplace to go
  
  None of these people seemed all that aggravating or overexposed, particularly Vanessa Redgrave, an actress who wasn't exactly top of mind in 1987. Same with Joe Piscopo, an actor/comedian who was on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984.
  
  Eddie Murphy, though, was a huge star. A very popular comedian, his blockbuster movie Beverly Hills Cop came out in 1984, and in 1985 he had a hit as a singer with "Party All The Time" (it went to #2, higher than any Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers song ever charted, so maybe that's how he got in the crosshairs). His movie Beverly Hills Cop II came out soon after this song was released.
  
  Eddie Murphy wasn't happy with his mention in the song, reportedly telling at least one interviewer, "F--k Tom Petty."
  
  Petty explained that these lines were written by Bob Dylan. In the book Conversations with Tom Petty, he explained: "What he (Dylan) was talking about was media overload and being slammed with so many things at once."
• The music video, directed by Jim Lenahan, shows the band performing in front of a wall of static with images of various TV and newspaper clips popping in and out. It did well on MTV, where Petty was a regular. His innovative videos earned him their Video Vanguard Award in 1994.
• Following the Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) album, Tom Petty put out a solo album, Full Moon Fever, which includes the classics "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Fallin'." Members of The Heartbreakers contributed to it, most prominently Mike Campbell, who played on all the tracks and co-wrote "Runnin' Down A Dream."