Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, his self-produced 25th album, continues Mellencamp’s journey through the past, this time offering a stark take on Americana that harkens to darker times before the 70-year-old songwriter was born: less late-career depression and more Great Depression. In recent years, he can still find his way around a singalong chorus, but beginning with 2008’s T-Bone Burnett collaboration Life, Death, Love and Freedom, Mellencamp has settled into a comfortable zone of traditional rock’n’roll, folk, and blues. Written around the time that he co-founded Farm Aid with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, Mellencamp’s work during this period marked a shift from his role as Seymour, Indiana’s biggest pop star to a heartland spokesperson, someone who paid more attention to John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie than to his peers on the charts.
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If Springsteen’s record felt like the dramatic, high-stakes movie version of small-town struggles, listening to Mellencamp was more like the documentary: an earthy and straightforward snapshot of well-meaning people just trying to get through another long day. 1985’s Scarecrow, his commercial and critical peak, was the scruffy foil to the blockbuster sheen of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. In the mid-’80s, Mellencamp just happened to be what the mainstream wanted: a non-coastal elitist attacking Reagan-era greed while landing on every Midwesterner’s lake mixtape during heartland rock’s golden age. John Mellencamp has always thrived in contradictions, and he makes his best music when he seems just out of step with the mainstream. A commercial-soundtracking 1980s icon who has collaborated on art shows with Miles Davis and Southern gothic musicals with Stephen King. A songwriter beloved by Republicans, who wrote multiple radio anthems criticizing the Republican party. Happy Go Lucky proves that Mellencamp has more surprises in him than many listeners would have expected and suggests that he is in the process of revitalizing his career.A self-described Midwestern socialist who campaigned for Bloomberg. Ironically, the tracks that exhibit Vasquez's influence the least are the least successful - they simply sound like Mellencamp is going through the motions. Happy Go Lucky, Mellencamp doesn't end up alienating his fans, but the reluctance to give himself over to dance makes the album uneven. It's a gentle change, not a forceful one - nothing sounds like dance music, but there are deeper rhythms and bass throughout the album, which breathes life into well-crafted songs like "Key West Intermezzo." Since he doesn't pursue dance completely on Mr. Happy Go Lucky which ocasionally gives the album a greater depth. Vasquez doesn't push Mellencamp into dance, but he adds certain dynamics and techniques from club music to Mr. Although he hasn't abandoned the essential elements of his music - the rootsy instrumentation, the violins, the simple song structures, the gritty folk-rock - he has augmented it with the help of Junior Vasquez, a noted dance producer. What is a surprise is his musical approach. Mellencamp has always been a bit of a fatalist, so it isn't any great surprise that there is an undercurrent of dark mortality running through most of his songs. Happy Go Lucky, the most overtly ambitious album in his career.
John Mellencamp responded to his massive heart attack and close-call with death with Mr.
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