Is it a rock, pop, or country song? Is it hopeful and carefree, or is it a melancholic warning of the fading of innocence? Is it honoring and validating the everyday existence of average people living average lives, or is it lamenting the sorrow and emptiness of nameless faces and faceless futures? There are two components to the beautiful, brilliant authenticity of “Jack and Diane”, one being the narrative and the other the musical structure. It’s honoring average lives as worthwhile and meaningful and deserving of recognition. Drawing a lineage from Woody Guthrie to Hank Williams to Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen, the stories of growing up in America and the mythologizing of the everyday experience bring an existential heroism to the characters in the song, making the most of their lives as “two American kids doing the best they can”. From the shuffle to the chords to the imagery, Mellencamp captures the tempo of everyday American life. So many images of authenticity are set against that acoustic strumming that the song feels like the early days of rock and country music. For the small disaffected generation of people born between the early ’60s and 1980, the story of America is a wistful one of hopes and dreams tempered by a reality of economic swings, institutional failings, and lying politicians. Generation X is America’s middle child latch-key kid who was, in Tom Petty’s words a few years later, “raised on promises” but always in the back of his mind pretty sure there was “a little more to life”. “It has the spirit of people who think that the sun rises and sets with them, and the world is here for them, which it actually is.” For a generation of young people coming of age after of decade of empty promises and fading institutions, the idea that individual lives mattered became an identity and a persona. As he explained in a video interview, “Jack and Diane can be about any of millions of kids in the US” because it is true Americana, reflecting culture and identity and ethos. In the same summer that gave us Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf”, John Cougar (before he reclaimed his name Mellencamp) gave American kids a song about themselves. It was infectious and engaging because it sounded like us - like our lives. That memory sticks with me because the song simply sounded different and demanded attention of the teens in the neighborhood. I can vaguely remember the first time it came across the boom-box playing in the lifeguard’s shack of River-Aire Pool where I grew up and spent my summers. Now, 37 years after it became a summer anthem, Mellencamp’s signature breakthrough song resonates as a tale of a simpler time mythologizing small town rural life and making peace with the hard reality that “life goes on, long after the thrill of living is done.” As members of Generation X settle comfortably into middle age, the nostalgia and reality of the song offer a time machine back to carefree youth before we became “women and men”. Far beyond a simple song, “Jack and Diane” became the song of the summer, playing out on car radios and at swimming pools, topping the charts at number one by October. The contrast between the two sounds almost sweetly reflects the contrasting themes of the ditty – the loud brash promise of youth with a melancholy realization of the fading days of passion and innocence.įor an unassuming pop song posing as a little ditty, it leaped onto radio playlists and the music charts with an addictive sound nearly impossible to ignore. At a time of emerging New Wave and the early rise of synthpop, John Mellencamp‘s breakthrough and most enduring song opens with an innovative guitar hook merging a raucous anthem rock chord that’s quickly tempered with an innocent and oddly appropriate twangy clip. In the summer of 1982, a “little ditty” about growing up “in the Heartland” became the most unexpected of anthems for a group of young people in the US later known as Generation X.
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