Every week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of nice artists and highlights songs you won’t know for our Deep Lower Friday sequence.
The duality of enjoyment and ache, of comedy and tragedy, or of life’s highs and lows is fertile territory for songwriters. And John Mellencamp has created some nice songs out of these and comparable themes, together with “Hurts So Good,” “Down and Out in Paradise,” “Unhappy Clowns,” and particularly “Between a Chortle and a Tear” from 1985’s Scarecrow. Rickie Lee Jones’s backing vocals add one thing particular to Mellencamp’s wry, bittersweet lyrics, however they didn’t file collectively in individual. Apparently, Mellencamp was such a fan that he was nervous to fulfill Jones in individual, and opted to have her file in Los Angeles somewhat than fly her out to his newly constructed Belmont Mall Studio in Indiana.
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In fact, Mellencamp was a fairly large star in his personal proper by 1985, and Scarecrow was his third massive multi-platinum hit. It was additionally the album that lastly received over rock critics who’d been lukewarm on the heartland rocker, touchdown him on the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop critics’ ballot for the primary time—in third place proper behind extra established essential darlings Speaking Heads and the Replacements. Seven completely different songs from Scarecrow charted on rock radio, however “Between a Chortle and a Tear” wasn’t one in every of them. A 2022 reissue of Scarecrow featured a quick demo of the tune that doesn’t have all of the phrases, however options a lovely rendering of the tune’s vocal melody in a barely completely different tempo.
Mellencamp hasn’t performed “Between a Chortle and a Tear” a lot on tour since 1986. However he revisited it for 1999’s Tough Harvest, which was recorded reside within the studio by Mellencamp and his band, as soon as once more in Belmont Mall. The gathering of covers and new preparations of outdated Mellencamp favorites, largely common singles, fulfilled his contractual obligations to Mercury Data earlier than he signed a brand new take care of Columbia. “Between a Chortle and a Tear” stands out as one of many lesser identified tracks on Tough Harvest, and in addition one of many extra dramatic reinventions, hauntingly quiet and a full 90 seconds shorter than the Scarecrow model.
Three extra important John Mellencamp deep album cuts:
“Low cost Shot”
Mellencamp was referred to as Johnny Cougar or John Cougar on his first six albums, lastly dropping the Cougar in 1991. His 1980 album Nothin’ Issues and What If It Did, nevertheless, ends with Mellencamp thumbing his nostril on the man who found and renamed him, Tony DeFries: “Effectively, the file firm’s changin’ my title now / Effectively, the file firm’s goin’ out of enterprise!”
“Jackie O”
Once I interviewed Mellencamp a couple of years in the past, I requested about his friendship with the late nice John Prine, and he was self-deprecating about their collaborations: “He would come to Indiana and we’d sit round and write stuff, however we by no means wrote something superb, to be fairly trustworthy.” The 2 songs they wrote collectively that did get launched are gems, although: Mellencamp’s playful 1983 tune “Jackie O” and Prine’s wistful 1995 observe “Take a Take a look at My Coronary heart.”
“Brothers”
One in all Mellencamp’s two brothers, the late Ted Mellencamp, was his tour supervisor. It’s not clear if the darkish story of sibling rivalry that he tells in “Brothers” is in any means autobiographical, the tune consists of among the most compelling lyrics on 1994’s Dance Bare.
To see our operating record of the highest 100 biggest rock stars of all time, click on right here.
