UMC.org Music Review
John Mellencamp: Freedom’s Road
Label: Universal
Sound/Style: Midwestern rock with country, folk and 1960s influences
By Steve Morley
(UMC.org)--Classic rock artist John Mellencamp has found a home in the country music market as well as on network television, where his latest hit song “Our Country” can be heard in an ad for Chevy Trucks. In the last decade, the outspoken rocker’s name has been associated more with blatant anti-war sentiments than with his music, which has grown out of vogue with current rock trends. Without changing his basic style in the slightest, the rough-hewn singer is ironically back in the mainstream. So it is with the ever-changing but still-familiar face of American life, a topic the Midwesterner has tackled for decades. Mellencamp’s odes to the U.S.A. have run the gamut from bumper-sticker patriotism to all-out attacks on the government, most recently in 2003 with the track “To Washington.” On his album Freedom’s Road, he again defends and laments his native land, but also holds out hope for fully realized American ideals of equality and justice.
The variety of perspectives on the record is both impressive and unwieldy, capturing the country’s diversity while retaining Mellencamp’s own spin. For instance, while the anthem-like “Our Country” is squarely planted in Heartland soil, careful wording like “I can stand beside the idea to stand and fight” makes a cagey distinction between the willingness to come to blows and agreement with war in general. In “The Americans,” Mellencamp projects an image of acceptance and big-brotherly support: “If you ever need some help/ Come and look my way/ 'Cause I try to be here for everyone/ I'm an American/ I respect you and your point of view.” Between the song’s lines, though, it seems he’s gauging the distance that still remains between present reality and his nation’s neighborly goal.
The artist embraces certain biblical principles even as he expresses doubts about Christian fundamentalists on “Heaven Is a Lonely Place.” Here, he facetiously implies that Paradise must be underoccupied if only a sanctified few can make the grade. Over a borrowed Rolling Stones riff, Mellencamp mockingly includes his own supposed exclusion from glory and assesses the condition of the human heart: “There's just no hope for me/ Might as well nail me to a tree/ Here I am, just another case/ Who cannot see the light/ I guess I can't take a hint/ Of what was said and what was meant/ Somehow we always come out blind/ When it comes to our hearts.”
On “Someday,” he loosely paraphrases the Book of Matthew’s “blessed are the peacemakers,” questioning animosity between people groups. While the word “someday” refers to an anticipated peace on earth in the first chorus, it later indicates the afterlife, as Mellencamp claims the gospel promise – if perhaps prematurely – for all peace-loving citizens: “Good fortune will come to those who create peace/ For those are the ones that will walk in heaven/ Someday, someday.” If the singer sometimes adopts an earthly take on faith, he promotes mercy on “Forgiveness” and cries out convincingly to God on the swampy “Rural Route,” which identifies the eroding countryside as a growing haven for violence and drug crime: “Forgive us Lord, get us out of here/ Off this rural route/ Oh merciful Father, show us the will/ Here on the rural route/ Give us the mercy for the drug-addicted and the mentally ill/ On the rural route.”
The title track unifies the CD’s differing viewpoints with its picture of liberty as a thoroughfare that affords access to all. As he points out, the cost of that passage is that the travelers in question can either be friend or foe. Even as Mellencamp steers toward amicable territory, the darker side of Freedom’s Road affirms that American privilege is, in the end, a two-way street.
Audio Clips
"Someday"
"Ghost Towns Along the Highway"
"The Americans"
"Forgiveness"
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