"JACK & DIANE" JOHN MELLENCAMP (1982)

This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.

As an MTV kid, I heard a lot of John Mellencamp growing up. John Cougar, actually, as that was his artist name at the time. “Jack & Diane”, “Small Town”, “Pink Houses”, “Hurts So Good”, “R.O.C.K. In The USA”. His version of America was different than mine. But what kept me from changing the channel was that Mellencamp always told captivating stories of the everyday. He’s an underrated storyteller in the music medium.

“Jack & Diane” are just “two American kids growing up in the heartland”. The song is a personal portrait of, well, nothing in particular. “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” And that’s the hook. Musically, it adopts a quiet-loud-quiet dynamic to give the song a bit more edge. The ultimate example of this is the bridge. And what a bridge it is. Thunderous drums and unyielding vocal harmonies for an unforgettable refrain.

“Suckin' on chilli dog outside the Tastee Freez.”

"SMALL TOWN" JOHN MELLENCAMP (1985)

For the next 30 days, I’ll be taking the #AprilAcrossAmerica challenge, picking one song a day as I make my way across the country and across genres at the same time.

Day 9: Bloomington, IN

Time to drive westward – from a small city in Ohio to a small town in Indiana. When John Mellencamp wrote this song, he wanted to capture the notion that you didn’t have to live in a big city to live it up. “Small Town” was about his simple, yet idyllic experience growing up in Bloomington. More than that, it’s a song about embracing your roots and community instead of trying to escape it.

I remember the first time I heard “Small Town” was seeing the video on MTV. It was a big year for music. And John Mellencamp’s heartland-fueled rock wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. But I loved this song right away – and I never ever got sick of it. In some ways, it’s one of the sincerest, most unpretentious rock songs ever written and recorded. And that means something. It’s human. And, with that, somehow it seems “Small Town” is like the definition and antithesis of rock ‘n roll all at once.

“Educated in a small town. Taught to fear of Jesus in a small town. Used to daydream in that small town. Another boring romantic, that's me.”