Tuesday, June 3, 2003

John Mellencamp “To Washington” released

To Washington

John Mellencamp

Writer(s): traditional, new lyrics by John Mellencamp (see lyrics here)

Released: June 3, 2003 (album cut on Trouble No More)

First Charted: --

Peak: 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.)

Sales (in millions): --

Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

John Mellencamp, the small-town boy from Indiana, released his first album in 1976. After a few lean years, he broke through with “I Need a Lover,” his first top-40 hit, in 1979. He went on to become one of the biggest acts of the 1980s with top-ten hits including “Hurts So Good,” “Jack and Diane,” “Pink Houses,” “Small Town,” and “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” He saw a drop-off in his commercial appeal in the 1990s, but still produced top-ten, platinum-selling albums and even landed another top-ten hit in 1994 with his cover of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night.”

Still, his chart-busting years were pretty much behind him by the end of the decade. In 1998, he got a fresh start when he signed with Columbia Records. He released two albums, 1998’s John Mellencamp and 2001’s Cuttin’ Heads, which failed to produce any chart entries on the Billboard Hot 100, although the albums still achieved gold status.

His third and final album with Columbia was Trouble No More, a collection of blues and folk covers. It certainly wasn’t going to revive his pop stardom, but it would serve as a marker for where he would go from there. Mellencamp settled into the voice that he’d hinted at all along: a disgruntled curmudgeon who railed against political and social injustice with angry, blues-and-folk-based protest songs. He became the 21st Century Woody Guthrie.

That was vividly apparent on the song “To Washington” from the Trouble No More collection. Mellencamp reworked a traditional folk song with new lyrics that railed against President Bush as a warmonger motivated by oil profits ^SF to thrust America into the Iraq War. He said it led to “a huge amount of abuse back hom in Indiana.” ^SF He explained, “People were driving past my house throwing s—t and yelling and giving my wife Elaine the finger as she drove down the street. I was driving to the airport one day with the boys (about four and eight then) and they played the song on the radio. A listener calls and says, ‘I don’t know who I hate the most, that John Mellencamp or Saddam Hussein.’ It really freaked the kids out and it pissed me off. We had to get security to come around the school playground because the teachers thought people might harm them.” ^SF