Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

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ordinaryperson
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Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by ordinaryperson »

Image

Scarecrow by John Cougar Mellencamp

AM Ranking: #1708
Genre: Heartland Rock
Release: 5 August 1985
Label: Riva
Ranked Songs: Small Town (#3604), R.O.C.K. in the USA (A Salute to '60s Rock) (Bubbling), Rain on the Scarecrow (Bubbling)

WikipediaRYM

01 | Rain on the Scarecrow
02 | Grandma's Theme (In The Baggage Coach Ahead)
03 | Small Town
04 | Minutes to Memories
05 | Lonely Ol' Night
06 | The Face of the Nation
07 | Justice and Independence '85
08 | Between a Laugh and a Tear
09 | Rumbleseat
10 | You've Got to Stand for Somethin'
11 | R.O.C.K. in the USA (A Salute to '60s Rock)
12 | The Kind of Fella I Am



Music videos:

Small Town
R.O.C.K. in the USA (A Salute to '60s Rock)
Lonely Ol' Night
Rain on the Scarecrow
Rumbleseat
Any type of opinion can be expressed on these discussion threads, you can post just a few words or a couple of paragraphs, you can even rank the tracks if you wanted to. New discussions will be posted on Fridays, so that users will have the time over the weekend to listen to the album and form their opinion on it.

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fasbjd
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by fasbjd »

Mellencamp is a home-town boy for me so I've always had an affinity for him. There were times in my teens where I wouldn't admit that though.

This album was the pinnacle crossroads of his roots rock and pop affections - it always felt like a classic CCR album set in the midwest. The big hits are well known and deservedly so - but I don't think there is a bad song in the bunch (except for maybe the interlude "Grandma's Theme" and the last song - seemed to me it would have been better off to have ended it with "R.O.C.K."). To me, the cream of the crop is "Rain on the Scarecrow" - a strong statement of the plight of the American farmer with a fitting gloomy accompaniment.
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FrankLotion
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by FrankLotion »

I didn’t really know too much of John Mellencamp’s music until today when I listened to this. I have to say it’s much easier to appreciate this album over some of his ubiquitous earlier hits, he has a great sense of urgency to his lyrics that still translates pretty well to my ears 30+ years on. What doesn’t seem to translate well for me is the glossy 80’s production that didn’t seem to fit very well with heartland rock of the era, which the magnificent acoustic version of “Small Town” really puts into relief. Still, this was a pretty enjoyable album front to back, I’d say it’s appropriately acclaimed.
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Safetycat
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by Safetycat »

Heartland rock always sounds overly samey to me, and this album is no exception. Aside from the singles, none of the songs really shine, and the entire thing kind of blurs together.

That being said, I like ROCK In The USA a lot, and the album isn't bad at all - in fact, I do actually like it. 6/10.
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spiritualized
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by spiritualized »

Oh dear...I didn't have a chance to listen to Yeasayer last week, so I saved my opinion for #2.
When I saw who was picked, all I could think was "bummer", wish I had not waited. Heartland Rock conjures pictures of leather jackets, cowboy boots and over-Americanised tunes. Springsteen springs to mind and I always considered Mellencamp as a substiture to the master of American Music (and I don't particularly care for Bruce Springsteen). To top it off, this album is from the 80s...
But...the album does not start badly, falters somehow with the single "Smalltown" and picks up later. It isn't as bad as I expected to be. The melodies are there, clean and tuneful guitars. Wikipedia states that Mellencamp & co listened to 60s rock music for a month before penning down this album. I wish Mellencamp's voice were a bit gruffer (I kept thinking this would be so much better with Mark Lanegan at the mic....)
Still, I don't root for the genre, but "Scarecrow" improves its image slightly - so a good 6.5/10 will do.
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Live in Phoenix
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by Live in Phoenix »

This one pales next to its predecessor Uh-Huh (even though only side 1 is good), and especially compared to what is probably the high point of his career, The Lonesome Jubilee. "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." is lame and did not deserve to be a heartbeat away from being a #1. I would recommend "Lonely 'ol Night" and I guess the somewhat hammy "Small Town." I'd go 2 out of 5 (and 5 out of 5 for The Lonesome Jubilee).
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by Krurze »

It's hard for me to write about this album because I don't really feel connected to the genre Heartland Rock and have a hard time even defining it. But let's try: For me, Heartland Rock is mainly an 80's genre with jangly, rolling guitars, a thin and streamlined production, a generally melancholic mood and the occasional synthesizer. Lyrically it deals with the plight of the working class in the rural Heartland of America. This is important because stylistically it might not differ too much from other MOTR rock music in the 80's. For example Don Henley's The Boys Of Summer would be a prime example of Heartland Rock if it was set in the Midwest instead of a beach community, at least by my definition.

I've included Songs by Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty on my all-time list and I've listened to some of The War On Drugs' acclaimed stuff in the last few years, but before today I haven't listened to a single song by John Mellencamp. So what better place to start than his most acclaimed album?

After listening to Scarecrow I've got a feeling that Mellencamp might be the most Heartland of them all. It's all there, except for the synthesizers, maybe. I mean, just take a look at the lyrics of Small Town, the most acclaimed song of the record:

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities

All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity [...]


How Heartland is that?

My main problem with this album (and the genre in general, probably) is, if you'd put this album on shuffle on an AOR radio station, would anyone ever notice? I certainly wouldn't. I see that Mellencamp tried to shuffle things up a little with the old-timey interlude Grandma's Theme and the generally more uptempo second half of the record. But ultimately I guess I have to accept that this is music for a demographic I am not a part of.
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Rob
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by Rob »

For me this was also the first time listening to John Cougar Mellencamp. Despite being something of a big name he doesn't seem to be on the radar of the general person posting on this forum. Maybe he is someone who was once big, but hasn't been able to keep in the spotlight like many contemporaries. As far as I can tell his popularity has never really extended much outside of the United States, which might explain why the Europeans on this board aren't that familiar with him.

I have actually listened to my fair share of Americana, as I enjoy the various genres there a lot. And not just Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty, but also more second tier artists like Steve Earle and John Hiatt. But for me too, John Mellencamp was somewhat an unknown quantity. I'm pretty sure I heard a song of his every now and then, but this was my first time really listening to him.

It's hard to rate on the two listens I had, especially as they weren't too focused, but it sounds good if somewhat unoriginal. He has the powerful rock of Bruce Springsteen, but he is more predictable. The same goes for his lyrics. I can't find anything wrong with it and at least Small Town is pretty great, but like last week's album I don't feel like Scarecrow does anything better than artists I already listen to. I probably will give him a second chance in the future, though.

For now, a 6 out of 10.

By the way, R.O.C.K. was easily my least favorite track here. I notice that every time I hear a rocker do an ode to old-time music it becomes somewhat embarrassing. What's up with that?
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ordinaryperson
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Re: Album Club Discussion #2: John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow

Post by ordinaryperson »

I figured since we are now on discussion #5 I should post about the albums we discussed in the past. John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow is an album I don't really have any strong opinions about. I'm surprised that even though I'm American my opinions line up more with the European users of this forum. Heartland rock is a genre I don't really like, most of the music in that genre relies mostly on nostalgia that I don't really have. Most of the nostalgia is for the 50s and 60s which would explain the genre's popularity in the late 70s and 80s.

Scarecrow (aside from R.O.C.K.) is mostly about the other focus of Heartland Rock, working class people. The album's opener, Rain on the Scarecrow is a good thesis statement on what we'll see on the rest of this album. I would say it's has the strongest lyrics of any of the other songs on this album. It certainly is the most emotional song on the album with it's focus on the farmers affected by the changing times. It's no coincidence that the same year this album came out the Farm Aid festival started, which was started by Neil Young, Willie Nelson, and John Mellencamp.

Small Town focuses on the nostalgia of having grown up in a Small Town. Not everybody can relate to growing up in a small town, including people like me who didn't grow up in a city but didn't live in a small town. The saving grace of song is that it sounds really good, otherwise this song would come off as even more of a masterbatory look by John Mellencamp at his childhood. It comes off as strange to me that an artist would try to make his audience be a very small population in the midwest of the United States. I'm even more fascinated by the fact that it worked.

Though it may have worked because of the success of an another album that came out the year before this one. I of course am talking about Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A., which I thought of more than once while listening to this album. Both albums have songs about the musician's hometown and a song that involves USA in it's lyrics. Scarecrow came off to me as a response to the success of Born in the USA, an album that barely uses any synthesizers and focuses on the people of the heartland.

The weakest song on Scarecrow is Justice and Independence '85, I felt it was really poorly written allegory. Naming the characters of the song Justice, Independence, and Nation seems laughably bad. The unintentional silliness of the lyrics takes away from any point the song was trying to make.

Rumbleseat is my favorite song on the album, mostly because of how out of place it seems. The song is about a depressed, socially awkward, man who lives alone and has no girlfriend. I can't think of any other Heartland Rock song like that, most of the songs are about men and women in a romantic relationship.

R.O.C.K. in the USA is another nostalgia fueled song, this time about rock music from the sixties. It's an ok song that benefits highly from it's very catchy chorus. The other songs on this album don't really have anything notable about them. Most of them just sound the same to me.

Overall, the album is repetitive with it's themes and it's sounds. Though it might be a personal problem with me since I can't really relate to most of the music on the album. The real stand outs are Rain on the Scarecrow and R.O.C.K., while everything else just blends in with each other. I don't like rating albums but I would give this album a 4/10.
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