Musical Monday - Jack and Diane by John Cougar

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: October 2, 1982 through October 23, 1982.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: October 2, 1982 through October 16, 1982.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.

One of the reasons the the decline of Chicago into producing pallid pablum is so disappointing is that other musical acts, like John Mellencamp, were busy staking out hard edged, biting music that would characterize the entire decade.

John Mellencamp, still using the moniker "John Cougar", had a bigger hit with Hurts So Good a few weeks prior, but the song Jack and Diane is a better song, and a better harbinger of how the bulk of Mellencamp's career would go. This is, in short, a song about the optimism and subsequent disillusionment that results from growing up in a small town in the heartland of America. As Mellencamp's career progressed, it became clear that his musical wheelhouse was songs that were essentially about growing up in rural Indiana.

Jack and Diane captures what little I know about life in small towns in Indiana. I've been to more than one - much of my family lives in one or another tiny town in the rural Midwest - both my parents grew up there, and many of my childhood memories are of spending time in places like McLeansboro, Illinois and Crawfordsville, Indiana. This song simply feels like those places. This song feels both hopeful and desperate, capturing the waste of potential that the narrowness of small town existence often creates. Small towns are a place that a lot of people love and at the same time desperately want to escape from. This song captures that paradox.

One odd note about this song relates to an interview I saw that John Mellencamp gave a while ago. He said that hand claps were used in the song just to keep time, and that the original intent was to go back and edit them out of the recording, leaving just the guitar and vocals. He said that when they did that, the song simply fell apart, and so they left them in.

Previous Musical Monday: Hard to Say I'm Sorry by Chicago

Subsequent Musical Monday: Pass the Dutchie by Musical Youth

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Hard to Say I'm Sorry by Chicago

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Who Can It Be Now? by Men at Work

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Abracadabra by the Steve Miller Band

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Who Can It Be Now? by Men at Work

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

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