the boss v the coug

*obv bruce has a lot more "good" songs than johnny does

mellencamp is a more entertaining personality

*obv bruce has a lot more "good" songs than johnny does

― reggie (qualmsley)

mmm dunno about that! Mellencamp 1980-1994 had an amazing run and was a far more successful singles artist.

the Boss for sure, even though I like the Coug

This is a joke

Bruce Springsteen

the boss writes a lot of songs about cars. the coug named himself after a car

treeship otm. cougs has some jams, springsteen at his best is a songwriter of the highest caliber and is genuinely insightful about how people in relationships feel & behave. if "has good singles" is the yardstick, yes indeed, the cougs has some good singles. they're trifles next to springsteen. IOW qualms otm, Springsteen has more "good" songs where the quotation marks indicate "songs that are better than the ones JCC has been able to write thus far"

I do like this as a poll though - once cougar decides on who he wants to be, it's exactly "a less ambitious version of the springsteen persona & midwestern rather than east coast"

haven't cared about Springsteen since I was a tween. Cougar has better singles = coug wins

never actually heard john cougar mellencamp before so just watched a couple of YouTube vids. seems to be a lot of clapping involved.

Springsteen is a unique figure in rock—literary but totally unpretentious. As a kid I had a copy of The River and was fascinated by it, especially the title track. (My parents had very few LPs and I was thebonly one who would play them on the dusty stereo system set up in the basemen.) There is so much longing and loss in those albums that I knew were foreign to my experience, but I could still feel it. A very important early encounter with art/imaginative identification for me.

As an idiot teenager I turned against Springsteen for a while because my parents and aunts and uncles loved him so much, and he seemed to be the poet of like, Long Island/New Jersey suburbia, which was a world I wanted to get away from. I always thought of him as a true poet though, not just an entertainer. When I returned to some of these albums in my twenties they were much better than I even remembered.

So like, nothing against Cougar, but Springsteen is just in a different league for me

Of course the boss is the best. Do you wanna get fired?

xp @ Treeesh - me too and I don't even consider myself a springsteen fan - I think the only albums I've ever owned hard copies of were Tunnel of Love & Nebraska. but just from every angle of songwriting - melody, lyrics, basic structural songwriting chops - one of these dudes is ridiculously talented, and the other's pretty good. somebody point me at Mellencamp's equivalent of "Blinded by the Light" or "Fire" - Bruce is a five-tools player, could have worked in the Brill Building if he'd been a little younger.

I hereby sentence Joan Crawford to spend 50 minutes in a basemetn listening to Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee.

Springsteen's the better songwriter, both are cornballs, both have excellent bands: Coog had Kenny Aronoff for god's sake.

While they both have upbeat clap-alongs, Bruce can also go deep and dark in a way that is out of Coug’s league

I think JCM's Jackie Brown is as good as any of those dark ballads that Springsteen did on Nebraska and elsewhere.

much respect to Springsteen but like Bjork I could just never get into his voice or tunes. Shocked by the Couggy challops itt even tho I agree

one of these dudes is ridiculously talented, and the other's pretty good.

^^^^ how is this even a question

just two american kids doin the best they can

it took the boss 20 years to get as corny as the cougs got in 5

"brilliant disguise," "state trooper," "thunder road," "rosalita," "the river," come on...

Springsteen's the better songwriter, both are cornballs, both have excellent bands: Coog had Kenny Aronoff for god's sake.

― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 2, 2018 1:27 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As much as I dig Springsteen, I'll take (Mellencamp-era) Aronoff over Max any day. No way could Max have pulled off the majestic drum entrance at 2:28 in "Check It Out."

I collected this top ten a year ago:

1. Hurts So Good
2. Get a Leg Up
3. Rain in the Scarecrow
4. Jack and Diane
5. Paper in Fire
6. Jackie Brown
7. Wild Nights w/Meshell Ndgeocello
8. Check It Out
9. Rumbleseat
10. Play Guitar
11. Ain’t Even Done with the Night

^^^ amazing performances and good songs, all of'em

coug vs. petty might be a better faceoff, but still

if we're arguing who had the best band between the three, petty wins in a walk

I collected this top ten a year ago:

i need a lister that won't drive me crazy

haven't heard that ndgeocello collab, instantly curious

tbh it's probably a draw. I only care about three Springsteen albums at best, maybe the same for Coog. Both continue recording shit no one cares about for the sake of touring.

lol it's a van cover??? wow

I hereby sentence Joan Crawford to spend 50 minutes in a basemetn listening to Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee.

I actually did a fair bit of time with The Scarecrow when it was new, and it was the one that got me to concede that the dude's got some talent. But -- and again, I'm not a big Springsteen stan, my position here is from the standpoint of a songwriter looking at both these dudes' work -- if Springsteen wrote The Scarecrow, none of it would even get released & he'd mine the best tracks on it for stray phrases & turnarounds. As an album is just is not on his level.

As much as I dig Springsteen, I'll take (Mellencamp-era) Aronoff over Max any day. No way could Max have pulled off the majestic drum entrance at 2:28 in "Check It Out."

This is crazy talk. Listen to the last minute of "Born in the USA."

oddly, when I started to get into pop music roundabout '82 in Louisville Ky, Springsteen was not on the radio: it was Nebraska time. It was still the AOR era, pre-classic rock radio, when you heard acts that had albums out right then and you did not hear acts that did not. And Springsteen pre Born in the USA just wasn't that big in that town, so the Boss canon was not heard on local rock radio at the time. I remember hearing "hungry Heart" in like 83 and thinking it was the Romantics.

But Coug? he is the Springsteen of Louisville, being that there's a strong Hoosier presence there. 1982-1984 is American fool and Uh huh time: the hits and album cuts were slammed on rock and pop radio at the time. "Play guitar" and Floyd's "not now John" were often played with the "shits" unexpurgated on rock radio. There was a red-necky, shit kicker quality that stood certain rock artists in good stead in the southern-leaning midwest at the time, and which Coug had in spades. In the early 80s, country was not at all cool in Lville, it was something yr grandparents liked.

xpost: which is to say that the lack of radio-ready Springsteen in 82 probly was an opportunity for Coug, who had for some some time been considered to have been a credulous pawn led around by the nose by Tony Defries/billy gaff and needed to be considered credible. Also: the Boss is sposed to be a diamond geezer; Coug by all accounts is a miserable asshole.

Also: the Boss is sposed to be a diamond geezer; Coug by all accounts is a miserable asshole.

as a former Bloomington resident I can attest to the truth of this

I never want to hear a single one of his songs ever again, now that I think about it

This is crazy talk. Listen to the last minute of "Born in the USA."

― Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Tuesday, October 2, 2018 3:20 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And that's something I don't think Aronoff could've pulled off.

That minute in BITUSA is my favorite Max moment, hands-down. And I don't dislike his playing generally, but he's too stiff and ham-fisted for my taste. Aronoff (from Uh-Huh to whatever the last accordion-and-violin album Coug made was) has a loose, trashy, garagey quality that I love.

Hate Springsteen, have occasionally enjoyed a Mellencamp song. Would take Seger and/or Petty over both of 'em without blinking.

Yeah. These days I'll take Petty too -- not that they have anything in common except white Midwesterners liked them.

i'll take any of them over the gaslight anthem

I'd take Springsteen for Manfred Mann's cover of "Blinded by the Light". Rarely has a cover been so much better than the original. MM puts it on another level. I only have a vague idea about Mellencamp but don't care about him.

Mellencamp is a complete nonentity this side of the Atlantic, Jimmy Buffett probably sells more, but I hate Springsteen so much I'd be tempted to vote for him anyway - except I'll do the decent thing and leave the Americans to their American Things.

Springsteen's the better songwriter, both are cornballs, both have excellent bands: Coog had Kenny Aronoff for god's sake

but springsteen had springsteen. mellencamp's guitarists were good but they weren't in the boss's league. add nils lofgren to that and it's a guitar landslide.

What would the Oz version be? Paul Kelly vs Jimmy Barnes?

as a songwriter, the coug tended to get to the hook faster than the boss did. he had more bubblegum and more garage in him. he was a good sprinter. but not sure he had the stamina for the long run like the boss did.

there is a hardcore band called john cougar concentration camp, pretty funny

Coug vs Petty is a better match. And Petty wins that. Coug is an ok songwriter and performer, but I consider him the same calibre as Bryan Adams.

oh come ON.

I suspect some of y'all, older than me, still suffer from the embarrassment of listening to him in real time in 1982-1988.

(also, Bryan Adams has several good songs, none as well-arranged or with as many good lines as Mellencamp's0.

I dunno, there are a lot of good Adams singles!

My friend's theory is that Bruce is so massive and epochal, when he was created (supernova, iirc) a little bit of Bruce magic rained down on and boosted several b-listers.

Coog and Petty didn't sound like Springsteen in the early Reagan years.

I suspect some of y'all, older than me, still suffer from the embarrassment of listening to him in real time in 1982-1988.

i listened to coug in exactly that real time and suffer no embarrassment. loved those records then, when they sounded fantastic on the radio, and love those records now, when they sound just as good in my memory. but my boss love always ran wider and deeper.

xpost Maybe not, but the Carter-era "I Need a Lover" starts out a full-bore Bruce ripoff, a C-student cop of "Jungleland."

lol at 'pink houses' as a higher high - that song feels like a bruce b-side that didn't make 'born in the usa'

I'm not even a fan but Springsteen wins this easily.

e.g. "Glory Days" and "Jack and Diane" deal with a similar idea but "Glory Days" actually, you know, gives me reasons to care about these people's nostalgia.

apropos of nothing, Mellencamp is certainly the better painter.
https://www.artsy.net/artist/john-mellencamp

I’m 34. I wasn’t interested in Springsteen until my mid-20s. From my perspective, it’s unbelievable that Nebraska was released between The River and Born in the U.S.A. Hell, it’s unbelievable Springsteen, or the caricature of Springsteen in my mind (essentially the Glory Days video), wrote and recorded Nebraska.

My mom loved “Johnny Cougar.”. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered he recorded under that name.

A person that uses:

Johnny Cougar
John Cougar
John Cougar Mellencamp
And John Mellencamp

is probably struggling with some identity issues. His catalog, or the parts of his catalog I’m familiar with (the popular parts), certainly illustrate this lifelong mid-life crisis.

there's a story connected to "Johnny Cougar" and "John Cougar," you know, and it had to with management.

I realize this is probably blasphemy to some, but I really think Springsteen suffered from horrible production. I absolutely love, from a songwriting perspective, Dancing in the Dark, but I find the production so tacky that I find it unlistenable.

Because the Night is an incredible song but this is the only performance I really love:

https://youtu.be/6OjW1TDANxk

I would probably like talking about music with Springsteen. For example:

https://www.treblezine.com/30889-bruce-springsteen-nebraska-suicide-influence/

I don’t know about John Mellencamp, but I’d bet he has interesting taste too.

struggling with some identity issues

a potential sign of a great artist, like prince and bonnie "prince" billie

a bruce b-side that didn't make 'born in the usa'

no way. "pink houses" is all time -- accurately captures depressing decrepit flyover state highway frontage roads the way "born to run" 'gets' wanting to escape the inertial social suction of the jerze

there's a story connected to "Johnny Cougar" and "John Cougar," you know, and it had to with management.

― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 3, 2018 12:47 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah! I just learned this from this nice interview I found:

http://americansongwriter.com/2005/01/john-mellencamp/

struggling with some identity issues

a potential sign of a great artist, like prince and bonnie "prince" billie

For sure. Palace, Palace Brothers, Will Oldham, etc. Likewise, every dance music producer!

Was this not a question on like a Maron or Bill Simmons podcast a few days ago?

Only one of these two dudes wrote Backstreets (as far as I know)

Was this not a question on like a Maron or Bill Simmons podcast a few days ago?

not that i heard, but it makes sense it would be

man I can see from the POV of somebody who wants to defend Mellencamp at his best but "Pink Houses" is so far beneath Springsteen's work on the same theme it's just...I cannot understand the position of somebody who does not agree that "Pink Houses" is at best a C+ in its class

how many homes were you evicted from growing up?

great songs should be able to affect you whether or not you experienced something directly related to the subject matter

I can't stand "Small Town."

sure, VC. but the opposite is true then too. great songs speak to experience, and as someone who grew up rather dramatically poor in the midwest, i feel "pink houses" is a much more evocative song than almost all of what i've heard from the boss, except maybe "darkness on the edge of town"

do you think that most people who grew up dramatically poor in the midwest prefer mellencamp to springsteen

was born in a rented one-bedroom house in Indiana actually my dude. Cougar is still a really mediocre songwriter

I guess if we didn't get thrown out of the house we can't grok the coug tho

Coug never spoke to me particularly when i was growing up, but i think his songs have a particular resonance for a certain kind of midwest small town life (not just because he has that song where he says small town a few hundred times.) My midwest go-to was always Cheap Trick tbh.

just explaining where i'm coming from homey and why i don't think it's ridiculous to regard J"C"M as non-mediocre ("pink houses"!) even if bruce is 'better'

as an east coaster with a dad from jersey, it's hard for me to identify with jcm over bruce. but it's about more than geography. i admit i haven't dug into the coug's catalog deeper than american fool and uh huh!, but nothing particularly scratched an itch the boss can't also, while the boss towers over him as a technical songwriter--his stories are much more specific, his turns of phrase sharper. but it's more than just his lyrics. his "whoa oh's" are whoa-oh-ier.

i can understand where boss-haters are coming from though. i imagine he rubs some the wrong way the way that, say, billy joel disagrees with m

*me

I guess if we didn't get thrown out of the house we can't grok the coug tho

also if you didn't have an interstate runnin' through your front yard.

I'll never forgive Cougs for "suckin' on a chili dog"

"Suckin' on a chili dog" is his "he could throw that speedball by you."

yeah, that's fair.

I used to hate the boss a lot tbh but I realized it was because Hilburn was telling me I didn't love rock music unless I worshipped Bruce

i like mellencamp a lot, would defend him any day of the week, never change the station if one of his songs comes on, but there's no way he's ever written anything on this level:

seen a man standin' over a dead dog
lyin' by the highway in a ditch
he's looking down kinda puzzled
pokin' that dog with a stick
got his car door flung open
he's standin' out on highway 31
like if he stood there long enough
that dog'd get up and run

and you didn't even have to pick a tune from the mostly parched Nebraska. We could find songs from The River, Born in the USA, Tunnel of Love and earlier.

This is my confession: Springsteen >> Coog. I'd reacted to the premise of the question. It's like saying Tom Petty is second-rate because he's not as great as Bob Dylan.

the line that makes it so haunting for me is "got his car door flung open," an image so precise and specific i almost feel like i've SEEN that guy standing out there on the highway

whereas mellencamp is the kind of lyricist who ends a chorus about small towns "oh, those small communities!" because he can't think of anything better to say

The crops we grew last summer weren't enough to pay the loans
Couldn't buy the seed to plant this spring and the farmers bank foreclosed
Called my old friend Schepman up to auction off the land
He said John it's just my job and I hope you understand
Hey calling it your job ol' hoss sure don't make it right
But if you want me to I'll say a prayer for your soul tonight
And grandma's on the front porch swing with a Bible in her hand
Sometimes I hear her singing take me to the promised land

Promised Land.

he's not just doing a springsteen impression there, he's straight up borrowing lines from the boss

so is Coog.

Scarecrow is easily Mellencamp's peak as a writer and that's an effective verse but John, as a character, hasn't got much flesh on his bones. he's a relatable type! but he's a type. Unlike our dude on highway 31, about whom we know very little, but whose moment at center stage leaves an indelible impression.

(and who also tells us a little about the narrator, about about the person who stands behind the narrator, etc)

i grew up in NJ in the '70s

so as an apostate, Coug

i grew up almost exactly halfway between asbury park and bloomington

voted for donnie iris

Ah! Leah! rules.

i don't mind being their whipping boy

seger the father, petty the son, mellencamp the holy ghost

I enjoy Mellencamp as much as Bon Jovi, a more interesting comparison anyway

i fight authority
authority always wins

It’s Bruce easy and it’s not close but that doesn’t mean I don’t get chills every time Check It Out or Lonely Ol Night comes on the radio.

got nothing against the big town coug, but 'authority song' is lame

well check you out

pretty sure there are several hundred country songs about growing up in small towns with better lyrics than those in most of Mellencamp's hits

probably a few from fellow Hoosier John Hiatt.

i guess i feel fatalistic lately, but one thing that really speaks to me is the way that Springsteen's characters are so often bound up and tossed around by the seas of forces and feelings and urges they can't control...whether these are economic (these jobs are going, boys, and they ain't coming back) to urges within them...a restlessness they can't ever really satisfy or even truly understand. they are almost mysteries to themselves, there's some ache for the idea of something more but at the same time a grim resignation that there won't be more than this (But you get used to anything, sooner or later it becomes your life) - born down in a dead man's town, i lost my money and i lost my wife - them things don't seem to matter much to me now...the room was dark, our bed was empty then I heard that long whistle whine.....

"Highway 29" off the Ghost of Tom Joad always haunts me a little bit, the last verse especially, the guy met a woman at the shoe store then they robbed a bank and it went bad....he ends up on the run but there's a spooky, kind of ghostly quality to the song at the end....

In a little desert motel, the air it was hot and clean
I slept the sleep of the dead, I didn't dream
I woke in the morning washed my face in the sink
We headed into the Sierra Madres 'cross the borderline

------

The winter sun, shot through the black trees
I told myself it was all something in her
But as we drove I knew it was something in me
Something had been comin' for a long long time
And something that was here with me now
On highway twenty nine

>> here again, why did he do the things he did, what cracked? sometimes I think everyone feels like this at certain times in life (obv in way less dramatic circumstances), you're just acting in some way you know you shouldn't but it feels like you can't stop, you're watching yourself from the outside...

The road was filled with broken glass and gasoline
She wasn't sayin' nothin'', it was just a dream
The wind come silent through the windshield
All I could see was snow and sky and pines
I closed my eyes and I was runnin',
I was runnin' then I was flyin'

>>just imagine his spirit running into the sky, leaving his body....

then you have to think about Tunnel of Love, like how brutal the divorce songs on that album (so when you look at me, you better look hard and look twice), Mellencamp I actually like a lot but he's never touched the things that Bruce's best songs have touched...

The Authority Song is a concise example of where the Coug's instincts fall short. I like to imagine his Bobby Fuller variation came after deciding to not go forward with his "gonna cry 95 tears" hook. He's got some decent stuff, but he doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between his derivative and original ideas.

I like those paintings linked to upthread better than any of his songs.

honestly I think the reason this is even being debated is those coug hits just sound amazing.
those peak Mellencamp/Gehman/Aronoff records make something like Scarecrow vs Born In The USA pretty legit.
literally, a gazilion people have covered the same lyrical territory as 'Lonely ol' Night' but few have made it sound like something you look forward to.

campreverb otm. thread's premise seems to me seems as natural as remarking: XTC is "better" but INXS hit higher highs; or, stereolab is "better" but goddamn broadcast! it's an authenticity thing too maybe. sure of course no shit johnny cash is "better" but merle haggard plumbed lower lows. "mama tried" to keep hag out of the pen that johnny only sang at. j"c"m sounds like he's singing from a life inside a springsteen song, and fighting to get out of it, desperate and damaged in a way the boss just doesn't; with the boss the observations are cooler and more detached, less traumatized and manically defiant. "pink houses"!

sure of course no shit johnny cash is "better" but merle haggard

um no

Hag >>> Cash

I don't like the Cash vs. Haggard thing at all with these two....not an apt comparison imo

Just so quamsley knows my "credentials", I grew up on a farm outside of a town of 200 ppl when I was 13 and got to sit through a real live farm auction of all our equipment and everything just like in Scarecrow or some shit

but like "Small Town" literally says jack shit about growing up in a small town...these people are just props they have no inner life, nothing. It says nothing about the sadness and paranoia and boredom and feeling out of place yet being afraid of leaving all the other stuff that was there...It's vapid, good tune and all, fun song but it's not great songwriting

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities
All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity
Educated in a small town
Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic that's me
But I've seen it all in a small town
Had myself a ball in a small town
Married an L.A. doll and brought her to this small town
Now she's small town just like me
No I cannot forget where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be
Got nothing against a big town
Still hayseed enough to say
Look who's in the big town
But my bed is in a small town
Oh, and that's good enough for me
Well I was born in a small town
And I can breathe in a small town
Gonna die in this small town
And that's probably where they'll bury me

feel like if the point of this thread was to laud coug - who has written some decent songs in his life and seems like a nice dude - comparing him to bruce springsteen was easily the worst way to go about it. in an earth-two timeline where bruce springsteen dies of a taffy overdose at the asbury park boardwalk at age 5, coug would feel like a more significant artist. but in this world he's the salleri figure. it sucks to have someone else doing what you're doing when you're a hard worker and they happen to have god-given talents.

Not to derail thread, but what Cash did -- often quite well, especially in the last decade or so of his life -- was meld songwriting, covers, and a mythos that eventually replaced whatever Cash was in real life. The feat reminds me of Cary Grant's witticism: "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant. So would I." (He also said Archie Leach turned into Cary Grant).

Mellancamp is example of an artist that greatly improved as he went. Don't know what Mainman Productions thought that this greaser bar band guy was going to become a Tigerbeat hero, but the Coug musically grew quite a bit.

Mellancamp was already in his 30s when he got real popular.

The Boss pretty much appeared full form on his first record. His classic band setup is a bit different being it was based around the two keyboard players and sax. Guitar was by intention, played down somewhat.

in this world he's the salleri figure

totally disagree. the boss is way more like andrea del sarto ('the faultless painter') than he is mozart ~

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)—so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

you are really pulling out all the stops, kudos

Merle Haggard is absolutely as good as Johnny Cash, and his records are much more obsessive about the overall sound. But Bakersfield isn't Nashville, either, whole lot to consider in that comparison

maximum respect for dragging Browning in here though

the day Coog or the Boss can write verses as romantic as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's I'll eat my hair:

At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
Of married flowers to either side outspread
From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Oh, those small communities

every time I see it I'm like, come on. In the first verse, even. And it rhymes with "provides little opportunity." If you were teaching high school AP poetry you would give this student a C with a warning that you won't be feeling as generous next time around. however while researching the Cougs's birthplace (Seymour, IN - pop. 17,000 - not really all that small according to me but then I spent three years as an adult in a town of 773, everything's relative) I ran across this and I have to say John Cougar massively, unimpeachably otm here

"When I was high on pot, it affected me so drastically that when I was in college there were times when I wouldn't get off the couch. I would lie there, listening to Roxy Music, right next to the record player so I wouldn't have to get up to flip the record over. I'd listen to this record, that record. There would be four or five days like that when I would be completely gone."

Andy Mackay had free time in 1984, he should've called Coog.

Coug supposedly used to cover the Stooges in his early days. The fact that he seems like the last person that would cover the Stooges in his early or any days is part of the problem.

maybe not weird though? saw this nugget on his wiki, between this and the Roxy Music story, seems as though Yung Coog's taste's were a little more urbane than his later image would suggest

Upon graduating from Vincennes University in 1974, Mellencamp played in several local bands including the glitter-band Trash, which was named for a New York Dolls song, and he later got a job in Seymour installing telephones.

"Grokking the coug" is the new "gleaming the cube."

I like both of these guys fine.

Natively speaking I am a midwesterner from an actual small town (Bolivar, Missouri, population 4,769). As a man once said, "I cannot forget from where it is that I come from."

But why judge them on who is the better blue-collar cosplayer? In my view, the Boss plumbs the sacred with more courage. Sometimes that leads him to excess, but it's worth it for lines like "a close band of happy thieves" or "the garden of a thousand sighs."

Hag over Cash is almost as much of a rout as Boss over Coug

with Cash/Hag neither is a semi-dud like JCM

does coug use the first person more than springsteen? i am by no means an expert on either of their lyrics, but the I in 'small town' and 'authority song' seems pretty specific while the various uses of We and I on born to run are much less so

maybe not weird though? saw this nugget on his wiki, between this and the Roxy Music story, seems as though Yung Coog's taste's were a little more urbane than his later image would suggest

Upon graduating from Vincennes University in 1974, Mellencamp played in several local bands including the glitter-band Trash, which was named for a New York Dolls song, and he later got a job in Seymour installing telephones.

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 4 October 2018 17:02 (thirty-four minutes ago) Permalink

Also Mick Ronson plays on his most famous song

springsteen seems to write in character more often? And addresses many songs to "little girls" and "darlings"

and mary

I feel like people are shitting on "Small Town" unfairly. If Randy Newman had written that exact same lyric people would be jacking off over it, especially this line:

Married an L.A. doll and brought her to this small town
Now she's small town just like me

I mean, that's almost cruel.

Coug doesn't use a fake accent, there's that

xpost and if Jason Aldean wrote we'd be rolling our eyes

wrote it

xpost and if Jason Aldean wrote we'd be rolling our eyes

Exactly. I think Mellencamp is always going to be seen as an uncool try-hard, where Springsteen is always going to be seen as an earnest poet, even though Mellencamp's actual singing is much more detached and "cool" than Springsteen, who sounds to me like he's shitting a peach pit.

I wish ceddy still posted on ILM.

Springsteen, who sounds to me like he's shitting a peach pit.

Deadly when allied to his gormless shit-eating grin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gww1opBRxU

That was going fine until the keyboards came in.

yeah I agree with bruce's face at 2:18

Coug doesn't use a fake accent, there's that

Bruce's NJ accent has sort of waxed and waned a bit, but iirc the part of Freehold he lived in was nicknamed "Little Texas"

Indeed, from Remnick's piece back when:

When Springsteen was touring behind the “Born to Run” album, in the mid-seventies, he would stand at the lip of the stage in a spotlight, vamping on a chord, and tell the story of growing up in a dingy two-family house next to a gas station in a working-class section of Freehold known as Texas, because it was first populated by hillbilly migrants from the South.

So there's that. FWIW, Indiana accents (like Missouri accents and parts of Ohio - Dwight Yoakam, for example, grew up around Columbus) can veer from southern to midwestern as well.

A thought: what does "guy in tight jeans, tousled hair in his eyes, named Johnny Cougar" say to your average late 70s rock critic? It says "This is Music For Girls - this is something I don't need to (probably don't want to) pay attention to." Meanwhile, Springsteen was explicitly being sold as "The New Bob Dylan." Serious stuff for serious young men at their typewriters.

hell, a music critic quit his gig to work with him.

If Randy Newman had written that exact same lyric people would be jacking off over it

randy newman would never write that lyric

my reaction to every single john mellencamp lyric posted in this thread: show don't tell man

I'm more interested in this Hag/Cash showdown tbh

newman is a lyric writer of improbably economy and grace. i am mad that you even brought him up in this discussion xp

btw it's hag, though cash was great

newman is a lyric writer of improbably economy and grace. i am mad that you even brought him up in this discussion

the post in question sort of indicates that our man does not really get newman so fret not imo

because it's like -- Newman did write his own version of "Small Town." It was an early journeyman piece, and it was called "Dayton, Ohio, 1903," and it shits on "Small Town" from a very great height

Sing a song of long ago
When things were green and movin' slow
And people'd stop to say hello
Or they'd say "hi" to you
"Would you like to come over for tea
With the missus and me?"
It's a real nice way
To spend the day
In Dayton, Ohio
On a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1903

Sing a song of long ago
When things could grow
And days flowed quietly
The air was clean and you could see
And folks were nice to you
"Would you like to come over for tea
With the missus and me?"
It's a real nice way
To spend the day
In Dayton, Ohio
On a lazy Sunday afternoon in 1903

but, in this song, the music converses with the lyric in an incredibly clear, obvious, and yet not hammy way, letting the listener know, with mild ragtime touches & turn-of-the-century dated turns that the author shares the narrator's dream, he he can't help it, but unlike the narrator, he can't really buy it.

this is obv a joke poll but it's brought out some good posts from ums and JCLC

http://thequietus.com/articles/25588-cat-power-chan-marshall-interview-favourite-music-albums?page=5

Wow bad taste!

feel gustibus smolder like paper in fire

i think those albums are all pretty good

i appreciate that it's an unpretentious list

I liked her list as well, nice cross section. None of my favorite albums, except maybe Nebraska, but plenty of my favorite artists. Husker Du, John Coltrane, etc.

i like that her bob dylan pick was 'desire' because ILM loves to say that one's overrated

we're the only place that makes the claim

yeah but for me this is the establishment i need to rail against

haha

I've never listened to Misfits "Earth A.D." before. It's good.

so good

Danzig is an amazing songwriter

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

notwithstanding that nobody has every bossed their jorts, this is as bad as when americans think any of their bands are on a level with the beatles

Yeah it is sad since so many are way better

randy newman theres another one but i spose if a country will straighfacedly plonk robert frost on the table when ppl are discussing yeats then you simply have to admit geography is a helluva drug and agree to not even disagree

Hm

lol dude

when americans think any of their bands are on a level with the beatles
always found it absurd to pit Beach Boys or Byrds against Beatles as if they stood a chance, even Stones is ridiculous (or, more accurately, irrelevant)

but obv there is no shortage of great american music, prob makes up abt 80% of the music discussed here

mac you can always shoot me an email when you wanna shoot the shit you ain't gotta send up the bat signal or nothing

as is generally known idrgaf about the Beatles but I get the "greatness" scale enough to know what we mean by it and would submit that both Parliament-Funkadelic and Blue Oyster Cult are greater than the Beatles, and I'd throw the Impressions in there too but they're "just" a singing group -- I think the metric by which the Beatles are judged best band is "band who plays their own music and writes their own songs" so fair enough but good luck to the Beatles in beating the Impressions on the actual classic sides front (and good luck to Lennon besting Mayfield on guitar)

I think it's settled by now that Abba were greater but that's a different thread

xp <3 just waiting kev_k now and it can begin

breaking news jclc now hates earth wind & fire tough one for the fans to take but thats showbiz

I’m tempted to vote Coug just to be contrarian and because I like Hurts So Good better than any Springsteen hit.

I don’t like the beatles that much

I like Blue Oyster Cult better than the Beatles and I vote

I always wished I liked them more

EWF & Black Sabbath best rock bands of the 70s mac do keep up

I like that darraghmac's one ILM post is a completely OT (and completely successful) troll.

hurts so good is actually a bryan adams track

jeez this site used to have *experts*

xp u missed out an M

the boss and the coug should have teamed up
they could have been the new Lennon and McCartney

mccartney and richards rly

i mean on the one hand this is just silly: i'm far from a stan and actively dislike a lot of classic springsteen (rosalita, spirits in the night, blinded by the light etc etc) but he's playing a different game. if you culled the cream of JCM's career you could put together a comp of maybe 15-20 really good tracks, and none of them would be within hailing distance of a grab-bag of springsteen album cuts.

but on the other... coug doesn't get nearly enough credit for his influence on alt-country/americana. going back to Scarecrow and Farm Aid. while everyone was name-checking Gram Parsons and Paul Westerberg, they were building on a template coug proved out (hi dere Lisa Germano rock fiddle). Keith Urban's one of the few on record about this, but scratch Uncle Tupelo and you'll find The Lonesome Jubilee.

"minutes to memories" probably the ur-text here: moody, rockin', and explicitly in conversation with Country (it's coug's The Gambler DO YOU SEE?)

props too for staying power: dude released like 6 records before he broke big (ah AOR days when labels had patience), and he's still releasing steadily in his victory-lap years (23-odd albums and counting).

but he's no springsteen

props too for staying power: dude released like 6 records before he broke big (ah AOR days when labels had patience), and he's still releasing steadily in his victory-lap years (23-odd albums and counting).

Remarkably, Bruce didn't have a top 10 hit until his 5th album - even "Born to Run" peaked at 23 or something - and he's never had a number 1 hit.

he was a regional superstar! a rock radio star, around the time of albums 3 and 4, in cities like cleveland, philly and boston, and all but nonexistent as far as radio was concerned in so many other parts of the country.

Album-wise, the only studio records of Springsteen's that didn't hit the top 10 in the US were his first two and The Ghost Of Tom Joad (which topped out at #11).

In terms of singles, yeah, "Born To Run" was the first one of his to chart at all, and "Dancing In The Dark" was his closest to a #1 (at #2). He hasn't hit the top 20 since 1997, though ("Secret Garden," in a re-release, for some reason, at #19).

Didn't "Streets of Philadelphia" do OK?

Peaked at 9 on the Hot 100 apparently

("Secret Garden," in a re-release, for some reason, at #19).

Jerry McGuire?

Ah, yeah, that explains it.

These kind of factoids fuel rock tropes about authenticity, don't they? Classic rock song X was kept from the number one slot by... by Barry Manilow! Like going to number 2 keeps one in the underdog house.

Well, at least Bruce was kept from number one by "When Doves Fucking Cry."

the things you could say on the radio back then....

Will Gaga's soundtrack about the perils of not keepin' it real keep Greta Van Fleet from reaching the top of the mountain? The battle is eternal.

(xp) doves can fucking cry until the dawn, IIRC.

These kind of factoids fuel rock tropes about authenticity, don't they? Classic rock song X was kept from the number one slot by... by Barry Manilow! Like going to number 2 keeps one in the underdog house.

― saddest kamancheh (bendy), Monday, November 5, 2018

iirc real rockists don't even look at the charts

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

its not enough

Good turnout.

it raised the issues that the viters cared about

Did the Coug ever appear on anybody else's record or collaborate with anybody, aside from that one Meshell Ndegeocello track?

only 13 contrarians? was this poll too contrarian?!

Joan Jett on Tumblin Down

Played tambourine on Windowlicker

suck it, coug

Joan Jett on Tumblin Down

― Greta Van Fleek (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, November 6, 2018 7:44 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha weird i guess maybe this is an old myth i heard years ago, not mentioned in the wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumblin%27_Down

"Peaceful World" is a song written and recorded by American rock artist John Mellencamp and India.Arie, and was featured on Mellencamp's album Cuttin' Heads.

Coug also has 5 songs with Carlene Carter, 1 with Martina McBride, 1 with a Little Big Town singer, 1 with Joan Baez

oh yeah, and Chuck D on "Cuttin' Heads"

When I saw him at Farm Aid in 1998, he had a rapper come out during "Jack and Diane".

New Jack and Diane

He produced James McMurtry's first album, Too Long in the Wasteland, and it's got that Kenny Arnoff angry country sound.

Some people say I'm obnoxious and lazy
That I'm uneducated
And my opinion means nothin'
But I know I'm a real good dancer
Don't need to look over my shoulder
To see what I'm after

love this lyric

i missed this poll but would have voted Springsteen

Cougar for me has catchy well-phrased songs & has a certain depth to his songwriting but i just don’t think he went as deep for as long as Springsteen did

also just purely on small town cred, Springsteen repeatedly nails the emptiness & longing of wishing you were somewhere else, and/or the angry caged feeling of being stuck. Mellencamp doesn’t seem to walk around in those feelings as much, it always seemed more surface observations to me or maybe just converting the negative into a bravado that’s fine but not as effective for me personally, different kinda writer too.

But yeah fuck, all the best Springsteen songs are screenplays, with characters & worlds & heartaches & questions & conflict ... there’s no competition in my mind.

love a lot of Coug but on his true classic cuts the lyrics only cut as deep as Livin on a Prayer.

ouch. tough but (mostly) fair, though JBJ never wrote a pop lyric as profound as "life goes on / long after the thrill of living is gone." That one stings more and more with each passing year

yeah idk... it would be cool if he were like 10% more artful but just off the top of my head "check it out" still manages to hit someplace pretty real

there are some great JCM lyrics and songs.

none of them even *approach* Springsteen.

"Check it Out" and "Cherry Bomb" were great singles. That was a good period for the 'coog.

The Boss' smugness usually rankles me a little more than JCM's, if that makes sense

I like both of them though and if I'm being honest have logged far more hours listening to Bruce.

Keep on cooglin’
cooglin’ how

Come on up for the cooglin’

Eh. Dumb initial question, like asking if Dryden is as good as Shakespeare, or, to fit the times, Tom Petty is as good as Dylan.

i.e I 'm gonna listen to Born in the U.S.A. and Scarecrow equally, and why not?

well, yeah

Bruce's sentimental horseshit about fuckin' JERSEY, my native soil, I've always found ludicrous

can't listen to that '70s crap

arenas helped him

gtfo w/ Dryden and Shakespeare, "populists"

You know what's even lamer than romanticizing New Jersey? Romanticizing Indiana.

they made money with their poems and plays, love mutton

Springsteen only became interesting after 1980 anyway.

by default I prefer tractors to cars (lifelong pedestrian)

xxp

xpost He himself, maybe. But the music took a shift before that.

alfred i’m afraid you’ve lost me

love them both, will shit on anyone who dislikes Scarecrow.

Shit On The Scarecrow/Piss On The Plow

Tom Petty > Dave Alvin > Pat Todd > Melonfarmer > the fuckin' Boss (I fuckin' quit)

the boss meets the coug! (aka ain't that americana for you and me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhppxrSzQ24

Ned to thread

Been on a Boss kick lately and ofc this is no contest

I can't stand the Coug, and Glory Days is my least favorite Springsteen song, mostly because it reminds me of Jack and Diane, but that video still made me smile.

This is a great thread. Especially all the stuff about Browning.