Celebrating John Mellencamp’s “Scarecrow”

July 31^st, 2025 will be the fortieth anniversary of the release of John Mellencamp’s album Scarecrow. This wasn’t the album that put Mellencamp on the musical map, that was 1982’s American Fool (with the hit songs” Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane”). But Scarecrow was no doubt a success and peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 album chart, while American Fool had spent nine weeks at #1. Both albums would eventually be certified 5 x platinum, although American Fool did it by 1996, Scarecrow achieved the distinction in 2001. Scarecrow was, however, the first album where we began to see the Mellencamp we know today, where he began to find his voice, and his music turned inwards and became a true personal expression through rock and roll.

It has been well documented that when Mellencamp began his career, he was forced to adopt the moniker John Cougar (actually, his first two albums, Chestnut Street Incident and A Biography, were attributed to “Johnny Cougar”), which he hated. He slowly began to distance himself from that name as success started to take hold. Scarecrow was his second album, where he used the name John Cougar Mellencamp. (It wouldn’t be until 1991’s Whenever We Wanted that he would drop the “Cougar” entirely.)

Scarecrow gave us a more down to earth Mellencamp, and it was his first album that he recorded at his studio in Indiana where he had his band run through a hundred songs from the sixties during rehearsal so according to producer Don Gehman, they could “learn all these devices from the past and use them in a new way with John’s arrangements.”

Mellencamp would release five singles from the album, the first being “Lonely Ol’ Night,” which peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Both “Small Town” and “R.O.C.K. in the USA” were also top ten hits and were followed by “Rain on the Scarecrow” and “Rumbleseat” as the last singles. The album would go on to be nominated for “Best Rock Vocal Performance – Male” at the 28^th Annual Grammy Awards, losing to Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.”

If you look back on where Mellencamp was in 1985, you’ll see a man recognizing his own voice and the power it had on the musical landscape. Scarecrow was his eighth studio album, although only American Fool and 1983’s Uh-huh had seen real success. While those albums gave us rock and roll stories about yearning for more or looking back on better times like “Jack and Diane” or “Pink Houses”, it was Scarecrow where Mellencamp zeroed in on what was known as “heartland rock.”

Songs like “Small Town” and “Rain on the Scarecrow” shared where Mellencamp came from and what mattered in middle America, like the 1980s farm crisis that he sings about on “Rain on the Scarecrow.” The album would also lead to Mellencamp taking a bigger stand politically and becoming more proactive in his outlook. In September of that same year, he would help organize the first Farm Aid on September 22, 1985.

Looking back on Mellencamp’s success in the 80s, it’s hard to believe he has only won one Grammy for “Hurts So Good.” While that song helped establish Mellencamp, it lacked the emotional deftness that he would later display with Scarecrow and the musical experimentation of 1987’s The Lonesome Jubilee. Mellencamp would continue touring and recording music. His most recent album was 2023’s Orpheus Descending (featuring Bruce Springsteen), but his songs don’t chart anymore (although what classic rocker’s songs do?). And there was a brief period in the 2010s where he was making headlines again for dating Meg Ryan and Christie Brinkley (which seems kind of awkward since Billy Joel is a friend and inducted Mellencamp into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008). But listen to Scarecrow again and celebrate its 40 years. If you can forgive the Mellencamp hairstyles from the ’80s, the music is still vibrant, rocking, and as poignant as ever. At a time when most music has nothing to say, Mellencamp’s Scarecrow still resonates as it did in 1985.

-Robert Matvan

Photo: John Mellencamp, 2011 (Andrea Sartorati via Wikimedia Commons)