John Mellencamp quotes

John Mellencamp is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and painter known for his heartland rock style. His songs often explore themes of small-town life and the American experience. He has influenced generations of artists with his distinctive sound and socially conscious lyrics. Here are 41 of his quotes:

Take 'Jack and Diane.' I was so disgusted with people thinking the line 'Hold on to sixteen as long as you can' meant to stay a teenager forever. What I meant was keep doing whatever makes you feel alive.

John Mellencamp

I'm using my art to comment on what I see. You don't have to agree with it.

John Mellencamp

Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depression. I don't care whose fault it is, it's the truth.

John Mellencamp

What is there to be afraid of? The worst thing that can happen is you fail. So what? I failed at a lot of things. My first record was horrible.

John Mellencamp

When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy's hand.

John Mellencamp

You cannot expect the guy who drove the car into the ditch to navigate it out of the ditch. You have to put a new driver in the seat. I'm not saying the new driver is going to be any better, but we need a new driver. Kerry is the only choice.

John Mellencamp

Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll.

John Mellencamp

When you live in hysteria, people start thinking emotionally.

John Mellencamp

This is about black people selling out other black people.

John Mellencamp

I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money.

John Mellencamp

I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is.

John Mellencamp

In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.

John Mellencamp

The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.

John Mellencamp

We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing.

John Mellencamp

People have the right to say what they want to.

John Mellencamp

If you hide information from people, don't want people to see the Ten Commandments or don't want people to hear about Darwin, aren't we hiding things that we know from our future generations? I just think that that's incorrect.

John Mellencamp

I couldn't have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn't have the depth to pull these songs off.

John Mellencamp

I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.

John Mellencamp

I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain?

John Mellencamp

I've just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn't qualify as a hit record-but it's really the best single I've ever had.

John Mellencamp

My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.

John Mellencamp

Natalie from the Dixie Chicks could have said what she said before 9-11 and no one would have cared.

John Mellencamp