Spin Magazine: The 40 Greatest Musicians of The Last 40 Years
Number 13
The songs your supermarket won't let die are his early pop hits, like "Jack and Diane" and "Pink Houses", when he was still struggling to get out of the Johnny Cougar straightjacket, but he hit what turned out to be his lasting stride, and lifelong alliance with the common man, with 1985's Scarecrow. Its thumping title track "Rain on the Scarecrow", and seminal cinema verite video, was a proclamation of the systematic pillaging of the American farmer (ha! Sound familiar, 2025?). By 1987's The Lonesome Jubilee he had established his mid-western, rural Indiana, Appalachian instruments-accented sound, and he was his own genre. And the Cougar yoke was gone. In the late '80s and '90s he released a string of superb albums that were commercial hits but also uncompromising social challenges. He championed the underdog and called out the bastards. Steadily for the last 30 years he has continued to put out soulful, achingly beautiful music, perhaps cresting with 2023 Orpheus Descending, with its powerful tracks "Hey God" and "The Eyes of Portland".While so many musicians were content to have singalong records, Mellencamp injured himself as the rural poet laureate. As a songwriter he's Springsteen and Dylan's equal, and if you don't think so, just ask them, they'll tell you.
Bob Guccione, Jr.