![]() The intentions of ''Scarecrow'' are laudable, and the songs often follow through. Even the album's most commercial song, ''Lonely Ol' Night,'' proclaims, ''It's a sad sad feeling when you're living on those in-betweens'' as its lovers arrange a rendezvous. ![]() He wants to pay tribute to the heartland's workers, to stick up for the unglamorous life and to counsel grit and steadfastness. ![]() With ''Scarecrow,'' he is determined to make an album that's not about John Cougar Mellencamp, but about - yes - America. Mellencamp has apparently decided that he has some responsibility. While an expanding audience sometimes encourages a musician to take more money and run, Mr. Mellencamp was energetically good-hearted, performing his own songs and plugging less popular songwriters he admired, such as Britain's Richard Thompson. ''Uh-huh'' sold two million copies in concert, Mr. Mellencamp was definitely feeling his oats as the voice of the underdog. The album also had an ''America'' anthem -''Pink Houses,'' about making do with disillusionment: ''Ain't that America home of the free/Little pink houses for you and me.'' Mellencamp's revenge on elitism song after song put down authority, pomposity and hip insincerity. ''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.'' ''Some people say I'm obnoxious and lazy,'' Mr. He responded with a masterstroke - the 1983 album, ''Uh-huh,'' in which he rocked even harder but no longer bothered with simple, lusty songs like his other 1982 hit, ''Hurts So Good.'' His new message was chest-thumping egalitarianism, laced with heartland pride. ''American Fool'' sold 2.9 million copies, and Mr. On his 1982 album ''American Fool,'' the song ''Jack & Diane'' insisted that after age 16, ''the thrill of living is gone.'' He described Jack and Diane as ''two American kids growin' up in the heartland'' - and when rock songwriters use the word ''American,'' they're aiming for major statements. He was something like a younger, rowdier Bob Seger. Mellencamp's music was (as it still is) basic three-chord rock, compounded of Rolling Stones guitar licks and Middle Western grit. When he sang ditties like ''I Need a Lover,'' Mr. Mellencamp is writing about failing farms and disillusioned steelworkers and he's calling songs ''Justice and Independence '85'' and ''The Face of a Nation.'' Now, on his new album, ''Scarecrow,'' Mr. What's gotten into John Cougar Mellencamp? Just a few years ago, before he reclaimed his last name, John Cougar acted like a standard-issue rock hellion - a scruffy, guitar-twanging, girl-chasing wise guy.
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