With that, the decades-long legacy of John Mellencamp really began, taking the nation by storm and providing a crucial foundation for the genre of Heartland Rock. That winter, Mellencamp received his first Grammy nomination, thanks to his vocal performance on the song. 1 spot by Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” which was taking the world by storm at the same time. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, only being withheld from the coveted No. Then, they headed twenty miles southwest of Mellencamp’s hometown, Seymour, Indiana, to the small town Medora, Indiana, to film a rousing music video (it was ‘82-MTV was a year old).īy August of 1982, “Hurts So Good” peaked at No. Not too long after, Mellencamp got into Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles with drummer Kenny Aronoff, bassist George “Chocolate” Perry, and guitarists Larry Crane and Mike Wanchic, and the track was immortalized on tape. Then I went and picked up the guitar, and within seconds, I had those chords.” Speaking years later with American Songwriter’s Paul Zollo, he explained that he and Green “exchanged lines back and forth between each other, and laughed about it at the time. Herald-Examiner that the opening quote from this article came from. “We thought of it as like a Shel Silverstein thing-it was really just a joke,” Mellencamp said in the same 1982 interview with The L.A. With the spark lit, the two immediately pounced on the idea. “I was still dripping wet when I got dressed, walked out of my bedroom, and said to my old songwriting friend George Green, ‘Hey! I just thought of a great chorus.’” “I literally dreamt up that song in the shower in my house in Bloomington,” Mellencamp wrote in the liner notes of The Best That I Could Do (1978-1988). Lord knows there are things we can do, babyĪll elements combined, “Hurts So Good” is an electrifying song, the kind that gets your toe tapping and your head bopping… which makes sense, considering that it was written in a truly jovial fashion by Mellencamp and one of his childhood friends and longtime collaborators, George Green. Now that I’m getting older, so much older
With its opening backbeat, its blazing guitar riff, and Mellencamp’s emotive, gravely croon on the lyrics, the song is a brilliant, nostalgic expression of embracing life, regardless of its often-rough edges. By the next year, he was accepting the Grammy award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and the rest is rock’n’roll history.īut the spark that truly lit the John Mellencamp flame was a tune that, itself, started as a joke: his single, “Hurts So Good.”
“Wasn’t God having a laugh when he made this whole place?”Īt the time, a then 30-year-old Mellencamp (who was using the name “John Cougar”) was at the onset of a very notable “good thing”-throughout that year, he released a string of now-iconic singles (including his signature hit, “Jack & Diane”), all supporting the release of his breakthrough album, American Fool. “I think all good things probably started as jokes,” John Mellencamp said back in 1982.
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