Plain Spoken |
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Released: September 23, 2014 Peak: 18 US, 169 UK, 19 CN Sales (in millions): -- Genre: rock/Americana |
Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks)
All songs written by John Mellencamp. Total Running Time: 43:40 The Players:
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Rating:  2.716 out of 5.00 (average of 13 ratings)
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About the Album: This was Mellencamp’s fourth album (including the soundtrack for the musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County) with producer T-Bone Burnett. Together they carved out an Americana sound for Mellencamp’s 21st century releases that was also typically marked by lyrical content that dealt with politics and social commentary. As he had always done, Mellencamp also created “character sketches of down and out and troubled people.” WK The lead single, Troubled Man, dated back to the early 1990s. He tried it again in 2004, but it still didn’t work. When he finally recorded it for Plain Spoken, he said, “The older I get the more I realize that if I just get out of the way of these songs and let the songs come to me, they turn out so much better.” WK Mellencamp said that Sometimes There’s God is “not so much a religious song but more about the feeling of inner peace and being able to identify happiness, disappointment without blaming it all on God.” WK The title came from a phrase uttered by the character Blanche DBois in the the movie/play A Streetcar Named Desire. WK The Isolation of Mister is, as Mellencamp says, “a song about men and how we rationalize and isolate ourselves from our regrets and mistakes.” WK The folk-based acoustic love song Blue Charlotte is “sung from the perspective of a man spending his final days with his dying wife.” WK He said, “I don’t know anybody in that situation. I don’t know about people who love each other until death do they part…So all I can figure is that Tennessee Williams sent me that thing.” WK The Courtesy of Kings is an expression from the 1800s. Mellencamp explained, it meant “be respectful, keep your word…It’s an old, old, old saying that I had heard as a child…I heard my grandfather say it…The song is about a woman who wanted to show the courtesy of kings, but she just couldn’t do it.” WK The closing track, Lawless Times, attacks “aspects of today’s society that seem less than moral.” WK Mellencamp said there were about 25 verses to the song and he had trim it down and try “not to be preachy or condescending or angry.” WK He said he thought he was inspired by John Steinbeck. WK |
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First posted 2/4/2012. |
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