"Rain on the Scarecrow" describes the 1980's economy that drove small farmers off their land. Like his contemporary Bruce Springsteen, his observations could be political. "Life goes on / long after the thrill of living is gone." "Jack and Diane" tells of a young couple's teenage romance - but the narrator knows where the story is headed. "Ain't Even Done With the Night" is the tale of a young man who doesn't know how to behave on a date. His early hits drew listeners into stories. He'd started out with a stage name, John Cougar, but before long had the power to drop the name and become himself. His concert tours filled football stadiums across the country. He was on the radio constantly in the 1980's, and I mean constantly - replays only partly driven by state pride. I rarely bought a Mellencamp album when I was growing up in his native Indiana, but I didn't have to.
There was a time when it seemed that he was for everybody, or at least that everybody knew his name. "I just see it as looking for the truth of life." If you disagree, that's all right with him: "I'm not for everybody." "I don't see it as dark at all," he said. The first line of the first song on the album is: "I always lie to strangers."
Three divorces and decades of fame have led him to the conclusion that all of us hide our true selves from other people - that each of us is alone. But having borrowed the words, the singer made the thought his own. He was paraphrasing a line from a play by Tennessee Williams, another student of American tragedy and longing. "What I've discovered at my ancient age is that we are all in solitary confinement inside our own skins, and we don't really get to know anybody." When we spoke this week, he said the lyrics distill something he's learned across 70 years of life. The songs on Strictly a One-eyed Jack are narrated by a character whose soul seems as battered as Mellencamp's cigarette-darkened voice. John Mellencamp's music has captured the moods of several eras - and at the start of 2022, his new album dwells on loneliness and lying. Suzanne Cordeiro / AFP via Getty Images Steve Inskeep - NPR John Mellencamp performs during the Farm Aid 2021 music festival at the Xfinity Theatre on Sept.
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