John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp
John J Mellencamp, also known as John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American musician, singer-songwriter, painter, and actor. He is known for his catchy, populist brand of heartland rock, which emphasizes traditional instrumentation. He rose to superstardom in the 1980s while "honing an almost startlingly plainspoken writing style that, starting in 1982, yielded a string of Top 10 singles," including "Hurts So Good," "Jack & Diane," "Crumblin' Down," "Pink Houses," "Lonely Ol' Night," "Small Town," "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.," "Paper in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth7 October 1951
CountryUnited States of America
All I can do is repeat what I think is the best information that anybody ever gave me.
I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,
You know, it's cigarettes that killed Jerry Garcia. Everyone thinks it's heroin, but it wasn't. It was cigarettes.
In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.
We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing.
When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.
I just think if the song's good, sing it. I don't care who's doing it. I don't care if it's a country act. I don't care if it's a rock act. If the song's good, sing it.
Take 'Jack and Diane.' I was so disgusted with people thinking the line 'Hold on to sixteen as long as you can' meant to stay a teenager forever. What I meant was keep doing whatever makes you feel alive.
I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain?
I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.
If you hide information from people, don't want people to see the Ten Commandments or don't want people to hear about Darwin, aren't we hiding things that we know from our future generations? I just think that that's incorrect.
Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.
People didn't listen to the song; they just heard the word Baghdad. They got angry. I was commenting on his economic position, not the war.
If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed, and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems.