There’s hardly a month that goes by without a attempt at improving the way that music sounds. The problem is, nearly all these brilliant moves come from artists and producers. Do consumers really take fidelity into consideration when making the few music-purchasing decisions?
John Mellencamp, stop. You are not Woody Guthrie. You’re a Springsteen wanna-be who got big when you put some Stones in your Americana, and god bless. But for the last 20-odd years you’ve been increasingly aching for respect and providing sociopolitcal rumination. It’s been more than 10 years since you’ve even had the spirit for a Van Morrison cover. Do you realize you’ve got an album called Life, Death, Love, And Freedom immediately following one called Freedom’s Road? An intervention is needed, and if necessary, we will file a legal injunction forcing you to rehire Kenny Aaronoff as your drummer and write at least 12 songs with the phrase “hey, baby” in the chorus that clock in at three minutes thirty max. Check that out, Coug.
Idolator’s favorite Entertainment Weekly-enabled amateur rock critic, Stephen King, has joined forces with heartland GOP-hater John Mellencamp to bring a musical to Atlanta’s Alliance Theater. More »
John McCain has acquiesced to John Mellencamp’s demands that the Republican presidential nominee stop playing the Coug’s “Pink Houses” and “Our Country” at his campaign rallies. “You know, here’s a guy running around saying, ‘I’m a true conservative.'” Mellencamp’s publicist told the AP. More »
Community-minded heartland liberals who also happen to be rock musicians have had to deal with Republican candidates misappropriating their songs since the great Reagan/Springsteen “misunderstanding” of 1984, but John Mellencamp has reached his limit. He’s “quietly” had his “people” approach Republican candidate John McCain to ask him to stop using the mildly patriotic (and awful) “Our Country” and the mildly subversive (and classic) “Pink Houses” at his campaign rallies. It’s easy to understand why McCain would want to use “Our Country”; he was probably just hypnotized like the rest of us by all those mom and apple pie and a two-car garage for everyone Chevy commercials. But Rolling Stone finds it hard to believe that dude even bothered to pull out the lyric sheet to Uh-Huh to see exactly what “Pink Houses” was saying about this great country of ours before he added it to the playlist.
In today’s New York Times, John Mellencamp–the man who can turn any photo shoot into a Newport Lights ad–defends his decision to use his “Our Country” song in a Chevrolet ad: “People say I sold out…No, I got sold out. More »
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal examines the future of John Mellencamp’s “Our Country,” which became the official song of Chevrolet in October; Mellencamp’s new album, which features the song, is slated for release next month. More »
