Dont Forget About Me
John Mellencamp • No Better Than This
John Mellencamp: “Don’t Forget About Me”
Yesterday, Mister Mellencamp released No Better Than This, the album he recorded while literally standing in the dusty footprints of a handful of music legends. This time last year, he and producer T-Bone Burnett planted their boots firmly on the electrical tape X that marked the Sun Studios floor on the spot where Elvis poured his soul onto a slab of vinyl.
From there, they moved to Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel—late BluesGod Robert Johnson’s room—and the First African Baptist Church. Whether it’s because of Burnett’s production or because of the lingering ghosts of the recording locations, there’s a haunted quality to the entire album.
Look, this isn’t the same guy who spent the 1980s with feathered hair, a practiced scowl and a made-up name. At 58, he’s grown in to his Marlboro-enhanced rasp and has finally earned the dirt on his denim jacket. When he delivers lines like “Give me back my youth/And don’t let me waste it this time”, it sounds like he’s telling Jack and Diane to do something other than kill their afternoons at the Tastee Freez…but not until they go back one more time, just to savor it.
Mellencamp’s first album was called John Cougar and he recorded it while he was using the same name for himself. Thirty-one years later, he sounds more like John Steinbeck…and a lot less like who he used to be.
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