Let Me Up (I've Had Enough) (1987)
1. Jammin' Me
2. Runaway Trains
3. The Damage You've Done
4. It'll All Work Out
5. My Life/ You're World
6. Think About Me
7. All Mixed Up
8. A Self-Made Man
9. Ain't Love Strange
10.How Many More Days?
11.Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)
Following the lush excess and conceptual detours of Southern Accents, Tom Petty returned in 1987 with Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough)—a record that, while not quite a stripped-down affair, at least gestures toward the simpler architecture of earlier efforts. This was not a full retreat, however. By the late ’80s, even Petty was not immune to the era’s creeping layers of keyboards and sonic gloss. Yet in typical fashion, he managed to assimilate the modern trappings without compromising the core of his identity. Whatever Petty dabbled in, he always sounded like Petty.
The album opens with its two most assertive offerings. Jammin’ Me, co-written with Bob Dylan, bristles with cynical energy and radio-friendly venom, while Runaway Train offers one of the most melodic choruses in Petty’s later catalogue. Together, they form a potent one-two punch, and nothing that follows quite hits with the same immediacy. But that’s not to say the remainder constitutes filler. Far from it. This is one of those albums where no single track overshadows the rest, but nearly all of them offer something worth hearing.
Petty’s ongoing curiosity with musical textures yields dividends. It’ll All Work Out, with its vaguely Eastern shuffle and melancholic mandolin, is perhaps the album’s most quietly affecting moment. All Mixed Up, meanwhile, winks at retro conventions while draping itself in synthesized flourishes that, while very much of their time, manage to age with a degree of charm. These aren’t so much risks as calculated sidesteps—and in both cases, they pay off.
For those seeking more traditional fare, Think About Me delivers a crunchy, guitar-led groove that harks back to Petty’s riffier beginnings. The closing title track, Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), provides a satisfyingly raw finale—Petty at his most direct, most fed-up, and arguably most fun. If the album as a whole lacks the mythic stature of Damn the Torpedoes or the ambition of Full Moon Fever still to come, it succeeds on the strength of cohesion and consistency.
Ultimately, Let Me Up is one of Petty’s stealth records—unassuming, accessible, and deceptively sturdy. It never begged for attention, but earned it anyway. As the decade came to a close, this release stood as a quiet reminder: even without grand statements or massive singles, Tom Petty knew how to make a rock and roll album that stuck to the ribs.
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