The Self-Sabotage Story Behind “Pop Singer” by John Cougar Mellencamp

The music industry may have viewed “Pop Singer” as a career suicide note, but John Cougar Mellencamp was declaring his desire to be viewed as more than a commodity selling units for a corporation. Of course, he was just that, but he was also at a point in his career where he wanted to reclaim his identity. Big Daddy was the last album with Cougar in his name. The transition to John Mellencamp came with his next album. And he devoted his time to painting rather than touring behind the album. Let’s look at the story behind “Pop Singer” by John Cougar Mellencamp.

Never wanted to be no pop singer
Never wanted to write no pop songs.
Never had no weird hair to get my songs over
Never wanted to hang out after the show
Pop singer writing of pop songs

Misunderstood

After success with albums like American Fool and Scarecrow, Mellencamp was tired of the game; he was not interested in appearing at certain events and bowing down to corporate radio.

In 1991, he spoke about the song “Pop Singer” on Later with Bob Costas: “A lot of people took it on a very ‘surfacy’ level. They didn’t really listen or something to what was being said in the song, and they thought that I was putting down what I had done for the last 10 years, and of course, that’s not true. I love the music, you know, I love making records.”

Never wanted to have my picture taken
Now, who would want to look into these eyes
Just want to make it real – good, bad, or indifferent
That’s the way that I live, and that’s the way that I’ll die
As a pop singer of pop songs

It Isn’t Real

“When I was growing up, there was a big distinction between rock and pop,” Mellencamp said in 1989 in an interview for his record label. “Rock was more immediate and had more to do with the artist, and pop music was, you know, a guy would write the song, a different guy would sing it, and a different guy would produce it. It wasn’t like it was anything real. It was just something to entertain us for the moment. All I was saying with ‘Pop Singer’ is, ‘Is that what we want our kids to have? Something cheap and superficial?”

Pop singer of pop songs

Fed Up with Fighting

“Any time anybody would want to diminish what I might have accomplished, they would refer to me as a pop singer,” he told Billboard magazine in 2001. “In reality, my songs were rock-folk songs that were on pop radio, which was a bigger accomplishment than if I had rerecorded ‘Hurts So Good’ again and again. It really pissed me off. … At that point, I was totally fed up with fighting, whether in my personal life or at PolyGram, which I had been fighting tooth and toenail every step of the way. I remember three or four times going up to [record executive] Dick Asher’s office and going, ‘Let me off this label!’ And I was tired of fighting the people in the band, who had become such huge rock stars, too. And familiarity breeds contempt. Too much jealousy, too much self-importance, too much rock stardom for everybody. So they went out to try and make a name for themselves. Everybody was too fatigued and wanted out for a while.”

Never wanted to be no pop singer
Never want to write no pop songs
Never wanted to have a manager over for dinner
Never wanted to hang out after the show

“He Finally Cut His Own Throat”

Mellencamp continued, “I would imagine there were some people when ‘Pop Singer’ came out who were so happy to hear me cut my own throat that they couldn’t stand it: ‘Good, look, he finally cut his own throat. Now we won’t have to deal with this f–ker anymore.’ I just stayed home and painted from 1988 to ’92. For four years, I just stood in front of a canvas in an art studio from 7 a.m. until midnight every day. If I wrote a song, it was strictly by accident or because of recording obligations. There were no shows from that time period, either.”

Pop singer of pop songs
Pop singer of pop songs

“Public Suicide”

In 1994, Mellencamp spoke about “Pop Singer” with Entertainment Weekly: “I committed public suicide with that song. It pissed everybody off and was probably intended to piss people off. We had just played like 160 shows, and it just made me literally sick to walk into an arena. At that point, I figured anything was better than that.”

Pop singer writing pop songs
Never wanted to be no pop singer, of pop songs
A pop singer
Never wanted to write no pop songs
Whenever We Wanted

After the break, Mellencamp’s next album was released at the end of 1991. The singer jumped right back into the crazy “pop singer” routine to promote it.

He told Billboard in 2001, “The record was honest. It wasn’t coming from any weird place. It was what I thought and was feeling at the time. There was nothing pretentious about it or following any kind of trend. But the fact we did a promotional tour for Whenever We Wanted was a mistake that almost killed everybody. It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. We did something like maybe a thousand radio stations all across the United States in 40 days. We would get in one town and be on the radio at 6:30 a.m., get on an airplane, be in a different town on the radio at drive time in the afternoon, and then fly somewhere else and be on the late show that night.”

In 1991, he told writer Beth Harris, “Big Daddy was the best record I ever made. Out of my agony came a couple of really beautiful songs.”

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