And though he’d had a few charting songs previously - “I Need a Lover (That Won’t Drive Me Crazy)” and “Ain’t Even Done with the Night” - he was still an artist searching for own unique style. Throughout this time Mellencamp was perfecting his own style which would draw from as many of these influences as he could. Please remember that the late’70s/early ’80s was a period when the most successful musical styles were undoubtedly disco (Bee Gees), New Wave (Duran Duran), hard rock (Led Zeppelin), soft rock (Little River Band) and country rock (Eagles). Related Content: ”Country for Folks Who Don’t Like Country” And to think it all really started with classics like “Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane.” Regardless of what preceded it, the career that followed included 22 Top 40 hits, 13 Grammy nominations, and inductions into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. But while American Fool seemed to appear from nowhere, it was the culmination of years of struggle. "My manager went in and was talking to the record company, and the president of the record company - who I won't mention his name, but you could probably figure it out - said, 'I don't know why Mellencamp insists on having these singing with him," Mellencamp said on The Howard Stern Show in 2017 (via Ultimate Classic Rock).Whether it was his little ditty about Jack and Diane or that one about heartache being painful and pleasurable, 1982 signaled the arrival of John Mellencamp for a generation of high schoolers. What do those Mellencamp collaborators have in common? They're African-American, and a Columbia Records executive had a problem with that. Seven years earlier, the singer had one of the biggest hits of his career with "Wild Night," a duet with Meshell Ndegeocello. That song appeared on his Columbia Records album Cuttin' Heads, of which the title track found Mellencamp performing with Public Enemy rapper Chuck D. In 2001, Mellencamp released the single "Peaceful World," a duet recorded with India.Arie. And after building up a long career and selling millions of albums, he has enough clout in the music industry to call it out when sees that kind of behavior go down. With his work on Farm Aid and songs about the working class, it tracks that John Mellencamp doesn't care much for injustice or intolerance. The role instead went to some guy named Brad Pitt. According to a 2017 interview on The Howard Stern Show, Mellencamp says he turned down the role of hunky J.D. (Despite the parallels to his real-life, the film is not biographical.) Mellencamp's first film could have come earlier, and might have made him into a star. Written by Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry and actually directed by Mellencamp himself, this 1992 movie is about a country music star whose life is a mess to heads back to his Indiana hometown to get his head on straight. His biggest acting work to date (among about four movies) is his film debut: Falling from Grace. While those musical stars successfully branched out into this other form of entertainment, Mellencamp resisted the lure of pursuing silver-screen stardom. As a photogenic guy with millions of fans, Hollywood came calling for John Mellencamp the way it has for so many other well-known musicians, from Elvis Presley to Dolly Parton to LL Cool J.
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