John Cougar Mellencamp Uh-Huh released

Uh-Huh John Cougar Mellencamp

Released: October 23, 1983 Peak: 9 US, 92 UK, 9 CN, 57 AU, 13 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 3.30 US, -- UK, 3.30 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Click on a song title for more details. Crumblin’ Down Pink Houses Authority Song Warmer Place to Sleep Jackie O Play Guitar Serious Business Lovin’ Mother Fo Ya Golden Gates Total Running Time: 32:59

Rating: 4.127 out of 5.00 (average of 16 ratings) Quotable: “His first terrific album.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AllMusic.com Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album “Since American Fool illustrated that John Cougar was becoming an actual songwriter, it’s only proper that he reclaimed his actual last name, Mellencamp, for the follow-up, Uh-Huh. After all, now that he had success, he wanted to be taken seriously, and Uh-Huh reflects that in its portraits of brokenhearted life in the Midwest and its rumbling undercurrent of despair. Although his lyrics still have the tendency to be a little too vague, they are more effective here than ever before, as is his music; he might not have changed his style at all – it’s still a fusion of the Stones and Springsteen – except that he now knows how to make it his own.” AM “Uh-Huh runs out of steam toward the end, but the first half…makes the record his first terrific album.” AM The album kicks off with “Crumblin’ Down,” a “dynamic rocker” AM that became Mellencamp’s third top-10 hit. It’s followed by “Pink Houses,” Mellencamp’s “best protest song” AM and another top-10 hit. He also delivers “the melancholy ‘Warmer Place to Sleep’.” AM and “Jackie O,” a songwriting collaboration with John Prine. The Songs Here’s a breakdown of the individual songs.

Crumblin’ Down John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp, George Green Released: 10/15/1983 (single), Uh-Huh (1983) B-Side: “Golden Gates” First Charted: 10/7/1983 Peak: 9 BB, 8 CB, 8 GR, 6 RR, 2 AR, 9 CN, 5 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 16.38 streaming About the Song: John Mellencamp kicked off his seventh album, Uh-Huh, with “the dynamic rocker Crumblin’ Down.” AM With its “kidding cynicism” AZ the song became his third top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 after the success of “Hurts So Good” (#2) and “Jack and Diane” from previous album, American Fool.

Pink Houses John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp (see lyrics here) Released: 12/10/1983 (single), 3/17/1984 (B-side of “Authority Song”), Uh-Huh (1983) B-Side: “Serious Business” First Charted: 10/29/1983 Peak: 8 BB, 12 CB, 8 GR, 9 RR, 3 AR, 15 CN, 69 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, -- world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 27.50 video, 125.46 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: John Mellencamp “perfected his angry-young-populist-meets-the-Rolling-Stones sound and persona” DM with “Pink Houses.” He’d struggled to find his sound early in his career before going “back to his Midwestern roots for the American Fool album” TC in 1982. With the #2 hit “Hurts So Good” and the chart-topping “Jack and Diane,” Mellencamp suddenly achieved superstardom. With the follow-up album, Uh-Huh, he chalked up another top-ten, platinum seller buoyed by a couple more top-ten-hits (“Crumblin’ Down” and “Pink Houses”). Mellencamp’s small-town Indiana heartland vibe was coming out even stronger. He “made it all right to be comfortable with middle-class America. He was not complacent, however.” TC He managed to write “a letter-perfect description” DM of “a part of a country long infested by the Ku Klux Klan” DM where “blacks are unknown” DM and “unwelcome.” DM He explained how the song was inspired, saying “I…saw this old man early in the morning, sitting on the porch of his pink shack with a cat in his arms. He waved and I waved back.” TC The result was a song about the American dream and how all Americans have a right to that dream. He took a “stand on behalf of the common man’s aspirations in the face of many obstacles” SS and made it perfectly respectable for the average American to simply dream of finding a place to settle down and call his own, “little pink houses for you and me.”

Authority Song John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp Released: 3/17/1984 (single), Uh-Huh (1983) B-Side: “Pink Houses” First Charted: 2/18/1984 Peak: 15 BB, 12 CB, 14 GR, 12 RR, 15 AR, 3 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 57.01 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: John Mellencamp always had a certain brash anti-authority vibe about him and truly embraced it on “Authority Song,” the third single from his Uh-Huh album. It gave him another top-20 hit after he’d had top=10 success with the album’s previous singles “Crumblin’ Down” and “Pink Houses.”

Warmer Place to Sleep John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp, George Green Released: Uh-Huh (1983) Peak: 38 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.67 streaming

Jackie O John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp, John Prine Released: Uh-Huh (1983) Peak: 32 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.60 streaming About the Song: This was a rare songwriting collaboration for John Mellencamp. He wrote the bouncy, quirky “Jackie O” about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis with help from folk-rock songwriting legend John Prine.

Play Guitar John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp, Larry Crane, Dan Ross Released: Uh-Huh (1983) First Charted: 2/4/1984 Peak: 28 AR, 3 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 8.55 streaming About the Song: “With his Stonesy band crackling behind him, the newly minted superstar also shows that he gets the joke of his ‘serious business’” AZ on “the garage rocker Play Guitar,” AM “which might have been the album’s fourth hit single if not for its admonition to ‘forget all about that macho shit.’” AZ

Serious Business John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp Released: 12/10/1983 (B-side of “Pink Houses”), Uh-Huh (1983) First Charted: 12/8/1984 Peak: 34 AR, 9 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.74 streaming About the Song: It wasn’t a single, but became a minor hit at album rock radio, giving Mellencamp five songs from Uh-Huh to reach that chart. The “serious business” in question is none other than “sex and violence and rock and roll.”

Lovin’ Mother fo Ya John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp Released: Uh-Huh (1983) Peak: 38 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.44 streaming

Golden Gates John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp Released: 10/15/1983 (B-side of “Crumblin’ Down”), Uh-Huh (1983) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.47 streaming

Resources/References: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine AZ Amazon.com review by Rickey Wright TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 456. DM Dave Marsh (1989). The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. New American Library: New York, NY. Pages 228-9. SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 572-3. Related DMDB Pages: First posted 1/20/2009; last updated 2/15/2026.