John Mellencamp

Following the stripped-down rock & roll of Whenever We Wanted, the somber Human Wheels comes as a bit of shock. Throughout his mid-'80s peak, John Mellencamp infused his best work with despair, but he never has sounded as beaten and broken as he does on Human Wheels. It's not just that the record sounds murky and bleak, but his singing is weary and the lyrics are filled with resignation. Consequently, Human Wheels isn't a particularly easy listen, even though it doesn't depart from his signature sound, but it is a rewarding one, and the record is arguably his most affecting.

Only John Mellencamp, whose career began with a series of wrong turns, raw determination, and the audaciousness to demand he be taken seriously could create a box set as strange, representative, and labyrinthine as On the Rural Route 7609. In the era of the “track,” Mellencamp has issued a massive, beautifully packaged, and exhaustively annotated four-disc career retrospective that doesn’t lean on his hits (many aren’t here), but rather on more obscure album cuts, outtakes, rarities (17 selections make their debuts here), and more recent material – numerous selections come from 2007’s Freedom’s Road and 2008’s Life Love Death and Freedom…

John Mellencamp - 1978-2012 (2013) {19 Disc Box Set Mercury Records B0019508-02}
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© 1978-2012, 2013 Mercury Records / Universal Music | B0019508-02
Rock / Southern Rock / Folk Rock / Blues Rock / Heartland Rock / Roots Rock

This is effectively the entire studio catalogue, and includes all the American singer-songwriter’s albums recorded as John Cougar, John Cougar Mellencamp and John Mellencamp for various record labels. The set contains a total of 223 tracks and spans 35 years. Twelve of the albums have bonus tracks, sourced from the 2005 re-mastered versions of Mellencamp’s Mercury releases.

Dance Naked is the 13th album by American singer-songwriter and musician John Mellencamp released in 1994. The album was released in response to the record company's accusations that Mellencamp's previous album, Human Wheels, didn't "fit the format." Mellencamp was irritated with this remark, feeling that none of his albums ever fit the format. As a result, he wrote several purposely radio-friendly songs and recorded them within the span of 14 days at his Belmont Mall recording studio in Belmont, Indiana, intending to show the lack of effort required to produce the type of album they were asking for.

With a career spanning more than 35 years, John Mellencamp has elevated his legacy from pop star to one of the most highly-respected songwriters of a generation. A GRAMMY winner, member of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, and Songwriters Hall Of Fame nominee (among many other accolades), he has achieved a total of 22 Top 40 hits in addition to earning the record for the “Most #1 tracks by a solo artist on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks” chart…