And they're the real pulse of Scarecrow's heartland.īut they all opened up Mellencamp as a serious artist, with his name now mentioned in the same breath as Bruce Springsteen (rather than, say, Billy Squier). Scarecrow's best songs – including "Small Town," which reached the Top 10 – went deeper and revealed more scars beneath the surface. in the U.S.A.," steered away from this territory too. The album's first single, "Lonely Ol' Night," while rootsy enough in musical spirit, wasn't exactly a lyrical masterstroke and far from representative of the album's overriding themes. Still, nobody was really sure how this would play at the time. It's a defining work that has settled into its role with age. More so than an any other album released during this period when artists as varied as X, Los Lobos and Elvis Costello were uncovering their own versions of roots music, Scarecrow is the sound of reinvention, a deliberate attempt at finding identity and purpose within a singer and songwriter who just a few years before revealed little if any depth. Lyrically, Mellencamp was moving worlds away from " I need a lover that won't drive me crazy / Some girl that knows the meaning of 'Hey, hit the highway.'" On songs like "Rain on the Scarecrow," "Small Town," "Minutes to Memories," "The Face of the Nation" and "Between a Laugh and a Tear," Mellencamp crawled into the working-class souls of the people he grew up with, and sighed and seethed at the hardships caused by Reaganomics.Īt times, Scarecrow is a battle cry other times, it shrugs at its plight and just does the best it can. But Scarecrow was (mostly) a full album of smart, heartland-inspired and Americana roots-pulling rock 'n' roll. Uh-Huh also included his first fully formed shot at breaking the hard-ass rocker image the record company had shaped for him on his first Top 40 hit, 1979's "I Need a Lover," "Pink Houses" (though American Fool's "Jack & Diane" came close).
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