John Mellencamp is not Bruce Springsteen.
Granted, he writes colloquially of everyday people and universal struggles. His voice is familiar and comforting. He’s an Everyman of a sort, relating to the farmer and the blue-collar worker and the Starbucks barista with equal resonance. Throughout his career, he has come off as honest and earnest. The Indiana singer-songwriter is obviously writing from the heart – and the heartland.
But unlike Springsteen, who has taken on elder-statesman status, Mellencamp’s sentiments often ring half-true. His new record, cloyingly titled “Freedom’s Road,” is a rootsy hodgepodge more focused on catchy hooks than solid stories. “Freedom’s Road,” his first album since 2003’s “Trouble No More,” is at the very least consistent – almost a meditation on what Mellencamp wants to be in his post-“Jack & Diane” years.
But he’s not quite there yet.
To answer the more immediate question, yes, “Freedom’s Road,” released today on Universal, is the home to “Our Country,” the song from the Chevy trucks ads played nauseam the past months.
“From the East coast to the West coast/Down the Dixie Highway back home/This is our country,” he sings. But it’s more like this is Mellencamp’s country, so much so that his record label was worried about the singer’s prerelease overexposure. Overexposure isn’t something record labels typically fret over: An artist’s ubiquity is something to be celebrated, at least from the label’s perspective.
But in this case, they were right. That ad – revolving around Mellencamp’s unnervingly patriotic, “This is our country” – has ruined the single. Radio still could glom onto it. But it’s difficult to imagine that anyone would want to listen to it after being force-fed the tune for months in what feels like an endlessly looped television ad.
Good for Chevy, maybe. Bad for Mellencamp, definitely.
Along the lines of the single, you can’t miss the entire album’s nationalistic bent. Forget “Our Country,” which is a commercial for a post-Sept. 11 rural America as much as it is Chevy’s Silverado truck line. The title track is what it is, a boring, cliché-ridden ditty. Turn your attention to “The Americans,” where Mellencamp spins the yarn: “I like my heroes to be honest and strong/I wear T-shirts and blue jeans/I try to understand all the cultures of this world/
I’m an American from the Midwest.”
More propaganda than poetry, it marks a curious lyrical evolution for Mellencamp.
It’s as if the singer-songwriter who gave us the ’80s-rock gem “Hurts So Good” is taking the FM-country music route of songwriting. Listen to any Big & Rich or Toby Keith song, and you can practically see the American flag a-wavin’. Mellencamp isn’t as overt as his country compatriots, but he’s not far off.
But the biggest crime on “Freedom’s Road” is that it’s not all that listenable. Yes, “Our Country” has the kind of chorus that sticks in your head. But outside of that song, nothing pops off the record and demands attention. The mostly inane folk-rock compositions are hardly enhanced by the lyrics, which don’t deserve the Springsteen comparisons some critics have bestowed upon them.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
