The new ATMOS mix and Digital Deluxe edition (with all bonus tracks) will also be available to stream via DSPs. The Super Deluxe and 2 CD Deluxe editions include previously unreleased bonus tracks and alternate versions, a booklet full of rare photographs, and all-new liner notes by acclaimed author and music critic Anthony DeCurtis. All configurations feature an all-new remix and remaster. The reissue includes a Super Deluxe edition (2 CDs, 180-gram LP, 7” Single, Blu-ray with ATMOS and Hi-Res Stereo mixes, booklet, poster, and lithographs) 2CD & Digital Deluxe edition and 180-gram LP and Deluxe LP. The album features two previously unreleased tracks, “Smart Guys” and “Carolina Shag,” with accompanying lyric videos directed by Shan Dan Horan. Before we went in, I gave them 120 songs and said, ‘I’ll see you in three months. We were kids barely able to play instruments. He added, “These songs work because I knew that they were made by amateur people. The first album recorded under his new name John Cougar Mellencamp was 1983s Uh-Huh, a Top-10 album that spawned the Top 10 singles Pink Houses and. I just went back to what I liked as a kid.” “Gone So Soon” is an affecting detour into vintage torch-song piano balladry, the bruised tenderness in Mellencamp’s voice evoking Dylan’s take on the American Songbook.He said, “Making that record was like having a bunch of really unknown but intelligent egos in one room with one wild man leading the charge.” He recalls working with the band, and how excited he would get during the process. The album’s centerpiece is the anthemic Springsteen duet “Wasted Days,” one more reminder that life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, with Mellencamp’s and Springsteen’s voices merging into one empathetic croak. “Did You Say Such a Thing,” one of the three songs featuring Bruce Springsteen, takes a strong stand against gossip. “Chasing Rainbows” is musically elegant, evoking the Band at their warmest, but lyrically unsparing in its realism: “As you walk down streets of broken dreams/Some have lost everything/While others are still looking for that easy pot of gold,” he warns, with far more contempt than pity in his voice. The bracing country-rock tune “Lie to Me” lances into a world of fakes and cheaters, with obvious political overtones. Often on Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, he sounds like Dylan or Waits, with their trickstery absurdism replaced by a stark Midwestern earnestness. Now, Mellencamp has essentially become that guy. John Cougar 1980 - Nothin Matters and What if it Did 1982 - American Fool 1983 - Uh Huh (remastered 2005) 1985 - Scarecrow 1987 - The Lonesome Jubilee. At 70, Mellencamp has seen enough: “Worries occupy my brain/I worry about tomorrow/I worry about today,” he sings over the front-porch blues stomp of “I Am a Man That Worries.” The music is just as serious, a rough yet refined version of the Americana rusticity that’s been a hallmark of his sound since back when he was positing himself as the hardheaded Indiana-roots rejoinder to MTV’s slick coastal elites - a dude who flipped the bird to the flashy excess of the Tawny Kitaen era by appearing on the cover of his 1987 album, The Lonesome Jubilee, sitting in a small-town bar next to a stone-faced farmer who looks like he’s been parked there since the Dust Bowl. The grim honesty of the sentiment is striking, almost as striking as the forbiddingly rugged croak of his voice, which now approaches Bob Dylan and Tom Waits territory in its rangy, weathered gravitas. “We watch our lives just fade away,” John Mellencamp sings on Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, his 25th studio album.
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