John Mellencamp “Rain on the Scarecrow” charted

Rain on the Scarecrow John Cougar Mellencamp

Writer(s): John Mellencamp, George M. Green (see lyrics here) Released: April 1986 First Charted: September 21, 1985 Peak: 21 US, 28 CB, 19 GR, 26 RR, 16 AR, 5 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 8.8 video, -- streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: John Mellencamp was born in Seymour, Indiana in 1951. He released his first album, Chestnut Street Incident, in 1976. He achieved superstar status in 1982 with fifth album, American Fool, a five-time platinum seller which reached #1 on the Billboard album chart. It began a streak of five consecutive platinum-selling, top-ten albums. 1985’s Scarecrow was the biggest of them. It also sold five million copies and generated five top-40 hits. The album’s first three singles (“Lonely Ol’ Night,” “Small Town,” and “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.”) were all top-10 hits. The fourth single, “Rain on the Scarecrow,” didn’t do as well as its predecessors, but “it holds up as well if not better than any of those hits.” AS It is “a fierce, downcast track written from the perspective of a man pushed to the brink by the pressures of making a living via agriculture.” AS Mellencamp and collaborator George Green (who also co-wrote “Hurts So Good”) were talking about towns that were disappearing and people who were losing their farms which had, in some cases, been in their families for generations. It ranks alongside “King Harvest Has Surely Come” by the Band and “A Month of Sundays” by Don Henley as “one of the best songs about the sadder side of the farming life.” AS “That sense of heartbreak mixes with potent anger as Mellencamp inhabits the harried protagonist with uncanny authenticity in one of his most memorable vocals. Amidst stomping drums and cutting guitars, he sets the scene with brutal efficiency in the first few lines: ‘Scarecrow on a wooden cross, blackbird in the barn / Four hundred empty acres that used to be my farm.’” AS Cashbox called it “solid riveting rock and roll from an American treasure” WK that is an “impassioned plea on behalf of America’s small farmers.” WK Billboard said it has a “raw rage and bleak visions of a disintegrating way of life.” WK Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for John Mellencamp AS American Songwriter (2019). Behind the Song: John Mellencamp, ‘Rain on the Scarecrow’” by Jim Beviglia WK Wikipedia page for Scarecrow Related Links: First posted 12/24/2022; last updated 12/26/2022.