![]() ![]() Coming off of 1983's massively successful but largely critically-panned Uh-Huh (which features the immortal “Pink Houses”), and 1981's American Fool, Scarecrow makes some gradualist changes to Mellencamp's general formula, introducing more folk elements (harmonica, pedal steel, more acoustic guitar) and a greater socio-political consciousness, while still not making a clean break with the up-tempo, fairly brainless rock-pop of the past. Some of these defenders have gone back to Mellencamp's critically-scorned, but massively popular, earlier albums and, while finding numerous faults within their slicked-up, glossy production, have found that they are not nearly the cynical exercises in cornpone-peddling they were once dismissed as.ġ985's Scarecrow is one of those earlier albums, though it can be seen as something of a dividing line in Mellencamp's career, and, as such, it highlights Mellencamp's faults and strengths in roughly equal measure. Especially in recent years, however, as his writer's voice has matured with age and his musical backdrops have become more rustic and explicitly acknowledging of Americana folk-blues-country, Mellencamp has picked-up a large group of defenders who will cite his respect for songwriting tradition, his generally keen eye for small-town detail and his good-natured, everybody-work-together populism (Mellencamp is a key contributor to charitable organization FarmAid) as proof of the need for a critical reevaluation. His detractors, including a large portion of rock-critic intelligentsia tend to cite his commercially cynical back story, his obvious debts to greater talents (Springsteen, Dylan), his occasionally purple lyricism and his unvarnished, some would say cheesy, earnestness as evidence for lumping him into the back-end of AM radio fodder, a distinction which stuck for most of his career. John (sometime Cougar) Mellencamp is a divisive, oft-mocked figure in the world of rock music, for both reasons both just and frivolous. Review Summary: The beginning of Mellencamp's long crawl to respectability ![]()
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