Take the opener, “I Always Lie to Strangers.” Singing in a voice as old as the desert, Mellencamp is accompanied by melancholy touches of violin, piano, and upright bass, as he laments that no, the church bells will not chime for thee.
Indeed, many of these songs sound like they could have been written and performed before World War II. Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, his self-produced 25th album, continues Mellencamp’s journey through the past, this time offering a stark take on Americana that harkens to darker times before the 70-year-old songwriter was born: less late-career depression and more Great Depression. In recent years, he can still find his way around a singalong chorus, but beginning with 2008’s T-Bone Burnett collaboration Life, Death, Love and Freedom, Mellencamp has settled into a comfortable zone of traditional rock’n’roll, folk, and blues. Written around the time that he co-founded Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, Mellencamp’s work during this period marked a shift from his role as Seymour, Indiana’s biggest pop star to a heartland spokesperson, someone who paid more attention to John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie than to his peers on the charts.
#YOUNG JOHN MELLENCAMP MOVIE#
If Springsteen’s record felt like the dramatic, high-stakes movie version of small-town struggles, listening to Mellencamp was more like the documentary: an earthy and straightforward snapshot of well-meaning people just trying to get through another long day. 1985’s Scarecrow, his commercial and critical peak, was the scruffy foil to the blockbuster sheen of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. In the mid-’80s, Mellencamp just happened to be what the mainstream wanted: a non-coastal elitist attacking Reagan-era greed while landing on every Midwesterner’s lake mixtape during heartland rock’s golden age. John Mellencamp has always thrived in contradictions, and he makes his best music when he seems just out of step with the mainstream. A commercial-soundtracking 1980s icon who has collaborated on art shows with Miles Davis and Southern gothic musicals with Stephen King. A songwriter beloved by Republicans, who wrote multiple radio anthems criticizing the Republican party. A self-described Midwestern socialist who campaigned for Bloomberg.
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