People.com: John Mellencamp Announces New Lyric Book Offering Rare Personal Peek at His Decades-Long Career (Exclusive)
If you've already got John Mellencamp's songs on your playlist, it might be time to add them to your bookshelf!
The rocker is set to release a new lyric book titled John Mellencamp: The Songbook: 50 Years of Song and Poetry on Sept. 29 via Rizzoli New York, PEOPLE can exclusively reveal.
The tome finds Mellencamp, 74, “opening his archives and tracing his evolution as both a songwriter and poet — spanning every era of his storied career,” according to a press release.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's music will be paired with previously unpublished personal photographs, handwritten drafts, notes and more.
Stephen King, who collaborated with Mellencamp on the musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, will write the foreword.
To celebrate the release, the “Jack & Diane” singer and Rizzoli will donate a portion of the book's April presales sold through the Rizzoli Bookstore to Farm Aid, the nonprofit organization he founded in 1985 with Willie Nelson and Neil Young to benefit American family farmers.
Fans can order limited-edition autographed and numbered books here, and any fan who buys the book presale in April will be entered to win a signed copy.
It's set to be an exciting summer for Mellencamp, who will kick off his Dancing Words Tour - Greatest Hits in July and play for 19 dates through August.
He plans to play his biggest hits, like “Hurts So Good” and “Pink Houses,” as well as popular tunes that he hasn't played live in decades, like “I Need a Lover,” “Wild Nights” and “Ain't Even Done with the Night.”
“I listened to [‘Ain't Even Done with the Night'] the other day for the first time, and I thought, ‘This isn't bad. We can modernize this and get away from ‘80s, ‘70s pop music sound and still do the song,'” he told PEOPLE upon announcing the tour. “I'm going to do ‘Jack & Diane,' but I'm going to do it as what they call a smash-up, which will be a soul song. People are going to go, ‘What the f---?'”
The musician, who released his latest album in 2023, said he knows he's in good company when it comes to playing on into his older years.
“If Willie Nelson can do it, I can do it. If Bob Dylan can do it, I can do it. If Bruce [Springsteen] can do it, I can do it,” he said. “So as long as those guys are still slugging, I'm still slugging.”
Mellencamp won the Icon Award at the 2026 iHeartRadio Music Awards in March, and received his trophy from daughter Teddi, who praised the rocker as her “best friend.”
"I've been doing this 50 years and I've enjoyed most of it," he joked as he accepted his win. "I want to say that, for all you young people who are starting out, there's nothing closer to heaven than writing a song or hearing your songs on the radio, or having a show."