What is John (Cougar) Mellancamp's best song?

also, i meant "check it out".

"chack it out" has not been recorded by anyone according to amg.

Even though he doesn't get played on the radio much outside of Indiana these days, Mellancamp still can write a good song every now and then. They really need to put together either a complete 70 minute CD best of or a two CD complete compliation. JCM is pretty much against greatest hits packages, so that is why he held out forever putting one out, even though I think a well chosen collection would probably help his profile more than anything.

good call on Jackie Brown - that's a great great very sad song!

When Avail played in Bloomington for the first time, the band insisted that my roommate who put on the show lead them out to see Mellancamp's house. On their next album they covered "Pink Houses".

"I think some douchebag like John Michael Montgomery would be considered Kentucky's Springstein"

Why not John Michael's brother Eddie, + his partner Troy Gentry?? (Lexington, right?) Whose new album rocks harder than anyother record to come out this year (not to mention harder than any album Bruce S. ever made), and has plenty of Mellencamp and Seger in it, to go with all the Allmans and Skynyrd. (On the other hand, MAYBE these two belong on that other thread about rocking Nazis, hard to tell...)

Anyway I really like Cherry Bomb and Small Town and think that pretty much every song I hear by the Coug on the radio sounds really good.

If you like The Panics, you should search out "The Fall of the House of Ruin" CD by the Walking Ruins, which is the later band by John Barge and Ian Brewer had from the early 80s till mid 90s. It is a hidden gem of punk rock.

The route I used to take to my (now ex-)band practice went right by John Michael Montgomery's house. I threw a beercan at it once.

http://scnc.britton.k12.mi.us/~vincentl/bmx/images/graphitetuffs.jpgig

No, not Aranoff himself. But definitely some drummer who's LISTENED to Kenny, and understands why Aranoff is a God Among Beatmaking Men. ('80s Melonhead sound is actually even more visible on the Chesney album, though. Not to mention the Petty sound. Seger's about equal.)

while i appreciate the shot of the rims, i believe the line was "that's when a smoke was a smoke".

"small town" is my favorite john mellencamp song despite -- or maybe because of -- the fact that i've never lived in one.

my high school graduation song was almost 'the authority song,' but we went with 'footloose' instead, in an attempt to be positive.

I fear you.

'Course, that was 1984, when "I Want A New Drug" became a hit single twice, the second time under the name "Ghostbusters."

Speaking of which, I would much rather have the James Gang represent Cleveland than (ugh) the Michael Stanley Band.

Hrmph. I mean, I agree, the live Adore set I have, which is a radio broadcast source, is quite fantastic, but the drum machine/loop restraint of the album is its own particular duty, and I find both work fantastically in different ways.

I'm thinking this might be the Coug's hardest rocking song, though maybe there's competition I'm not thinking of at the moment. (Like, "Rain On The Scarecrow" maybe. Or "Thundering Hearts". Or "Authority Song." Or something else.). Anyway, it's either my first or second or third favorite song on his self-titled album from 1979 (the other two top-threes being "I Need A Lover" and "Miami." I love the idea of "The Great Midwest," but its music's not all that musical):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rre3LspKC8&feature=PlayList&p=B3778D2DB1CE62B2&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=73

Also scrawled some stuff about 1980's Nothing Matters And What If It Did on another thread a couple weeks ago, starting with the post below (keep scrolling down for more on other songs on the album):

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

(If that youtube link is fucked, the song in question is "Pray For Me.")

(And maybe by his "hardest rocking" I just mean his "heaviest," in the sense that say "Adam Raised A Cain" is Springsteen's heaviest song. But I'd say the Coug song is less an immobile slab than that Bruce one is.)

He's ended up with a career kind of like Mark Knopfler and Tom Petty, where he gets to write some great songs and great albums (Trouble No More) without shooting for the Top 40.

That Springsteen vocal is mad overwrought too.

I'd like to hear Will Oldham do a late-night cover of "Rain on the Scarecrow."

Ha ha, just realized that "Pray For Me" and "Adam Raised A Cain" also both have Old Testament-inspired lyrics. (Coug even mentions Cain! Swear I hadn't made that connection when I made that comparison above.)

I Need a Lover Who Won't Drive Me Crazy is really pretty great...
I also like Ain't Even Done with the Night, Authority Song, Paper & Fire, Rumbleseat, Cherry Bomb.

Other good'uns: "Get a Leg Up," "Jackie Brown," "Check It Out." The two-disc comp released a few years ago has dull patches, but it's the only place to find the minor charting singles.

?? Well, you can also find them on the original albums! (Or in "Jackie Brown"'s case, the 45, I guess, since the album was boring, plus you get the probably even better acoustic version on the B-side. Hey, hunt down the "Let It All Hang Out" 45 while you're at it. Never had much use for "Get A Leg Up" myself.)

Btw, also just occurred to me that it's kinda weird how Pat Benatar's (inferior, though still good) cover of "I Need a Lover" came out only two months after Coug's original (or at least that's when the LPs charted -- October 1979 compared to August.)

?? Well, you can also find them on the original albums!

I thought this went without saying!

i remember liking this when i was a kid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OblFpDkAUnM

co-written by John Prine

"Let It All Hang Out" was a single? It was a hidden track on Big Daddy.

Yep, I've got one. Looks like this:

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s1562774.jpg

Okay, so, The Kid Inside. My copy is on MainMan (his manager Tony DeFries' label), distributed by IDS London, 1982. Cover looks pretty darn bath-house porny. Recorded in 1977 (when Coug was 25) for MCA, supposedly, but never came out then; was going to be the followup to The Chestnut Street Incident from '76, which I've never heard. (I've also never heard his third album, Biography, which came out in the UK and Australia in 1978 -- has anybody?) Anyway, Kid's Wiki page lists two tracks at the end that aren't on my vinyl copy, "The Whore" (1:21) and a cover of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World" (maybe on the CD?) And the sound quality on mine is extremely muddy -- sounds like a demo tape recorded in a garage, so it takes several listens for the songs to sink in. I'm still not quite there yet, I don't think. But the best and fastest of it -- "Cheap Shot," "R. Gang," "American Son," maybe "Take What You Want" -- sounds like mid '70s Midwestern garage punk, period, as in bands (usually from Northern Ohio) who liked ripping off the Stones and Dolls and other stuff that got written about in Creem; slower saxed one "Young Genocides" apes Lou Reed not so much different than somebody like Peter Laughner would. (Not saying it's as great as Laughner, but it's on the same backstreet.) Not a lot of Springsteen or Seger, as far as I can tell. Though the interminable segued closing twofer (7:44 "Too Young To Live" then 4:07 "Survive") is some kind of failed street opera; a precursor of "I Need A Lover"'s garage prog maybe, but unlike that song it never gets a groove going. Bat Out Of Hell didn't come out until October 1977, probably too late to have been an influence, so maybe they were both going for the same sort of Born To Run epic there. Coug's a way better singer than Meat, but Meat was funnier about it. Still, overall, it's pretty clear John had has own sound already, and it's not mistakable for anybody else's. Good album. I'm surprised that it's not some kinda cult item (unless it is, somewhere.)

http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drd100/d117/d11753f4f61.jpg

(Btw, not saying I like Bat Out Of Hell more than this whole album -- just more than that hard-to-get-through 12 minutes at the end.)

Also guessing that, at almost eight minutes, "Too Young To Live" is probably Cougarcamp's longest song ever. Also quite possibly his worst -- at least up through 1987. After that, all bets are off.

I've always liked "Minutes to Memories" from Scarecrow. Not his best song, but as an album track, forgotten good one.

The Kid Inside, hey? Yowch - more like "Inside The Kid." Bathhouse porn indeed.

I always liked "Cherry Bomb" and "Lonely Ol' Night" - just sonically, really. And I adore his version of Jimmie Rodgers' "Gambling Barroom Blues".

Can we get toward a consensus CD-80 of Da Best Of JCM?

Big fan of "Minutes to Memories" here fwiw.

xhuxk, I won't argue the 87 cutoff but I am curious. imo "Love and Happiness" is as vicious a musical gutpunch as Mellencamp ever delivered, and Human Wheels is nearly impeccable front to back.

Great cover.

The Lonesome Jubilee is a useful border, but, of course, he recorded lots of good songs afterwards, most of which are on that near-essential double disc comp released in 2004: "Jackie Brown," "Get a Leg Up," "Again Tonight," "Love and Happiness" (hmm...is Whenever We Wanted worth buying? Most of my favorite post-1987 tracks are from that) the "Wild Night" cover."

I do like "Get a Leg Up". Funny video - he has all his paintings in the background there.

Ha ha, I like "Jackie Brown" and "Let It All Hang Out" and "Peaceful World" post '87, and that's about it. Didn't mind Trouble No More for about a year or so when it came out, then I came to my senses. But I am an old crank.

Also, upthread I say "its been decades since I listened to *Chestnut Street Incident* or *The Kid Inside*," but I swear I've never actually heard the former. Unless my younger sister (also a big Bryan Adams and Helix fan back then) played her cassette copy in the background once.

http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drd100/d117/d11753f4f61.jpg http://images.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGCOVERS/music/cover200/drl100/l159/l15974o0dkv.jpg

Since nobody's mentioned them yet, let me throw in "We Are the People" and "Martha Say."

Me on his new album, his new box set, and his new The Early Years (guess which one I like most):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2010/08/mellencamp.html

huh, yeah, that box set sounds pretty revisionary. would be interested in hearing that early years comp -- and that Gulcher EP you mention!

"What If I Came Knocking" has superb drumming, no surprise because it's Kenny Aronoff, but for a ballad it rocks awfully hard.

I love those early '90s performances; they often hoodwink me into overrating the material.

I understand what you're saying but I think "What If I Came Knocking" is worth a high rating.

The current incarnation of J(C)M - dark suits, string ties, old-timey acoustic bands - is getting a lot of love from the streaming services for some reason. I've watched two separate folk-rockumentaries about him in as many months. (And I watch ALL the music documentaries, even if I don't particularly like the artist.)

There may never come a day where anyone says that Springsteen is New Jersey's Mellencamp, but... he might be out-Springsteening Springsteen at the present moment.

Almost every good Mellensong has something very right about it; but they also usually have at least one clunky bit in there too. If pressed I'd go with "Check it Out" or "Scarecrow."

I only know the hits. Have typically always favored Pink Houses, but Small Town probably tops it, as may Paper in Fire, which I used to find a little annoying but nowhere near as much as Jack and Diane. Whatever floor of the tower of song Springsteen may inhabit, Mellencamp's somewhere in the annex.

I like someone's youtube comment on Lonely Ol' Night: "the genius of this song is putting the melody in the percussion"

I love this song and this performance of it in particular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CHvDPRWgJ4

that is very nice!

I love this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7eve-kJHSA

It's a toss up between Check It Out or Lonely Ol' Night for me.

suckin' on a chilidog