Not that long ago, John Mellencamp was sure he knew what kind of tour was right for him.
“I could do a whole show of hits if I wanted to, but I don’t,” he told the New York Times in 2023. “That’s one reason I quit playing arenas and playing outdoors. It wasn’t about music — it was about being a human jukebox.”
Yet as this singer, songwriter and lifelong cigarette connoisseur said as he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008: “I’ve been a total walking contradiction my entire career, and I intend to stay that way.”
So here he comes Monday night to the Hollywood Bowl, where the 74-year-old will bring his Dancing Words tour for an evening outdoors that he promises will feature his “most beloved songs,” including hits he hasn’t performed live for ages.
You can think of the road show as Mellencamp’s response to the success of Madonna’s recent Celebration tour, which offered a similar look back by a pop icon long averse to nostalgia. Or perhaps he’s aware that the heartland rock style he helped pioneer is back in vogue thanks to acts like Sam Fender and the War on Drugs. (Times contributor Erin Osmon just published an astute new book, “Won’t Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America,” that examines the style’s history and politics.)
Whatever the case, the occasion seemed a good moment to rank all 29 of Mellencamp’s singles that have charted on Billboard’s Hot 100 — starting with the worst and ending with the best.
29. ‘Small Paradise’ (peaked at No. 87 in February 1980)
The singer wants to be Bruce Springsteen; the band wants to be … ABBA?
28. ‘Again Tonight’ (peaked at No. 36 in March 1992)
Mellencamp once derided his albums from the ’90s as “paint-by-numbers” affairs that he only made because he couldn’t get out of his record deal. I can see it.
27. ‘Get a Leg Up’ (peaked at No. 14 in November 1991)
Then again, bored rich guys can get frisky too.
26. ‘This Time’ (peaked at No. 27 in December 1980)
Working in the studio with Stax Records’ Steve Cropper (who died in December), Mellencamp got a jaunty groove going for this swinging white-soul jam, which he’s described in retrospect as a “stupid little pop song.”
25. ‘Just Another Day’ (peaked at No. 46 in March 1997)
Breezier than you’d expect from a guy writing in the wake of a heart attack.
24. ‘Dance Naked’ (peaked at No. 41 in December 1994)
A horndog, but a chivalrous one: “I want you to dance naked / So I can see you / I’d like to get to know you / But only if you want to.”
23. ‘Our Country’ (peaked at No. 88 in November 2006)
Another Mellencamp contradiction: After talking for years about how much he hated seeing rock songs in commercials — “The most disgusting thing is those dancing raisins,” he told The Times in 1988 — he licensed this midtempo strummer to Chevrolet for a spot that mixed beauty shots of the all-new Silverado with darker images from Vietnam and Hurricane Katrina.
22. ‘Rooty Toot Toot’ (peaked at No. 61 in June 1988)
A sweet little throwaway in which Mellencamp picks up steaks at the grocery store for a picnic with his daughter Teddi.
21. ‘I Need a Lover’ (peaked at No. 28 in December 1979)
Mellencamp’s first charting single — originally released under the name Johnny Cougar — followed a false start under David Bowie’s former manager, Tony DeFries, who tried unsuccessfully to introduce Mellencamp as a kind of a glam-rock pin-up. (“I wasn’t as ugly then as I am now,” the singer told the New York Times three years ago.) Having left DeFries for Rod Stewart’s manager, Billy Gaff, Mellencamp had better luck with the slightly rougher-hewn “I Need a Lover,” which took off in Australia and then found an audience here thanks in part to a cover by Pat Benatar.
20. ‘Ain’t Even Done with the Night’ (peaked at No. 17 in May 1981)
“I Need a Lover’s” breakthrough bought Mellencamp some more time from the record-company suits who “thought I was going to turn into the next Neil Diamond,” as he told the music journalist Deborah Frost in 1983. (He should’ve been so lucky.) When this Motown-y gem did even better than “Lover,” Mellencamp hit the road with the Kinks. “They hated me, but I did two tours with them,” he recalled in a 2001 Billboard interview. “I had to — it was either open for them or for Uriah Heep.”
19. ‘Human Wheels’ (peaked at No. 48 in November 1993)
Seven years after R.E.M. borrowed Mellencamp’s recording studio (and his producer) to cut “Lifes Rich Pageant,” Mellencamp borrowed R.E.M.’s folk-rock jangle for this meditation on mortality. Dig that mandolin lick.
18. ‘R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to ’60s Rock)’ (peaked at No. 2 in April 1986)
With explicit shout-outs to Mitch Ryder and Jackie Wilson — and implicit nods to Diamond and the Troggs — this wholesome celebration of Mellencamp’s forebears was blocked from No. 1 by another musical tribute: Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus.”
17. ‘Lonely Ol’ Night’ (peaked at No. 6 in October 1985)
“She calls me ‘baby’ / She calls everybody ‘baby.’”
16. ‘Cherry Bomb’ (peaked at No. 8 in January 1988)
Ever wonder why Mellencamp passes the mic to a few of his bandmates in the second verse? “Sly and the Family Stone,” he told GQ in 2022. “He had all those hit records when I was in junior high, and I love the fact that all the sudden there’s a female voice, then a male voice.”
15. ‘Rumbleseat’ (peaked at No. 28 in August 1986)
Mike Wanchic and Larry Crane’s guitars never chugged more cooperatively.
14. ‘Jackie Brown’ (peaked at No. 48 in August 1989)
“‘Jackie Brown’ is about as real as John Mellencamp is going to get,” the singer told Spin about this portrait of an impoverished man lent no help by an uncaring society. Yet the song was actually Mellencamp’s response to the emptiness he felt as a famous divorcé on the road playing the biggest concerts of his life.
13. ‘Hand to Hold on To’ (peaked at No. 19 in January 1983)
For which Mellencamp showed up to shoot a music video wearing a leather vest over a “Where’s Waldo?” top.
12. ‘Authority Song’ (peaked at No. 15 in May 1984)
What if Kenny Loggins had been in the Clash?
11. ‘Pop Singer’ (peaked at No. 15 in June 1989)
Never wanted to write no pop songs (except for this one).
10. ‘Check It Out’ (peaked at No. 14 in April 1988)
As John Cascella’s accordion and Lisa Germano’s fiddle keep needling him, Mellencamp comes up hard against the limits of contentment: “All utility bills have been paid / Can’t tell your best buddy that you love him.”
9. ‘Paper in Fire’ (peaked at No. 9 in October 1987)
“The ultimate John Mellencamp song,” according to John Mellencamp? He told Rolling Stone it’s this barnburner about letting what you want keep you from what you need.
8. ‘Wild Night’ (peaked at No. 3 in September 1994)
Mellencamp’s last Top 10 single — assuming he doesn’t hook up with Drake any time soon — put him next to Boyz II Men and Coolio on the Hot 100, which probably thrilled him: For this funky cover of Van Morrison’s early-’70s hit, he recruited an unlikely duet partner in Meshell Ndegeocello, who’d just dropped her hard-to-classify debut. Fun fact: After Ndegeocello played bass on 1994’s “Dance Naked” album, Mellencamp got Raphael Saadiq to join Kenny Aronoff in the rhythm section for his next LP.
7. ‘Hurts So Good’ (peaked at No. 2 in August 1982)
The lead single from Mellencamp’s five-times-platinum “American Fool,” “Hurts So Good” came to the singer in the shower, he’s said — one reason, perhaps, he finds such zest in his request that a lover “sink your teeth right through my bones.” Six months after it reached No. 2 (behind Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”), the song won Mellencamp’s only Grammy Award, beating Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” and Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” for male rock vocal performance.
6. ‘Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)’ (peaked at No. 14 in October 1996)
Mellencamp’s idea for 1996’s “Mr. Happy Go Lucky,” he told Spin that year, was “to take as urban a beat as we could and put it with the most urban ’40s blues we could find.” One accomplice in that mission: the veteran club DJ Junior Vasquez, who helps give this appealingly seedy flirtation a humid rhythmic throb.
5. ‘Rain on the Scarecrow’ (peaked at No. 21 in June 1986)
Easily the most ferocious song in Mellencamp’s catalog.
4. ‘Small Town’ (peaked at No. 6 in December 1985)
“It’s more about feelings than a physical place,” the singer told The Times in 1986. “That’s why I can say to the audience, ‘It’s nice to be in your small town,’ when I go to places like Los Angeles or New York. As long as you keep in touch with your family and friends, you can carve out a small town anywhere.”
3. ‘Crumblin’ Down’ (peaked at No. 9 in November 1983)
The way Mellencamp tells it, the walls crumbling down were those that protected the poor before President Reagan’s deregulating spree. Yet the trick of this irresistible groove is that it feels like a house party caving in on itself.
2. ‘Jack & Diane’ (peaked at No. 1 in October 1982)
Nearly five decades after it came out, Mellencamp’s only chart-topper — and his most-streamed track on Spotify — can still grab your ear with its weird mishmash of guitar sounds, borderline-vulgar language about a chili dog and the second-best drum fill in all of early-’80s rock (after Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” obviously).
1. ‘Pink Houses’ (peaked at No. 8 in February 1984)
Little ditty ’bout millions of Americans growing old — and disillusioned — in the heartland. Like “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Rockin’ in the Free World,” “Pink Houses” was practically destined to be misinterpreted by elected salesmen peddling easy fantasies. What elevates Mellencamp’s song is the dual consciousness in his raspy vocal: the nagging belief in a dream that, like everything else, “just kind of came and went.”
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