Top 90 John Mellencamp Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “She chased after her dream with much desire, but when she got to close to her expectations, well the dream burned up like paper in fire.”

— John Mellencamp

52. “All my friends are so small town.”

— John Mellencamp

53. “My voice has gotten better from smoking.”

— John Mellencamp

54. “I’m your average Joe guy. I don’t really care for politicians.”

— John Mellencamp

55. “I’ve just been fortunate to havehad a lot of hit records, though Human Wheels doesn’t qualify as a hit record-but it’s really the best single I’ve ever had.”

— John Mellencamp

56. “Music actually meant something when I started doing it. Too bad I wasn’t mature enough to write anything that meant anything.”

— John Mellencamp

57. “People in Indiana have known me for 25 years. They’ve known George Bush four.”

— John Mellencamp

58. “I have a bunch of information in my head that I’m not afraid to put in song or onto a canvas. Into any conversation.”

— John Mellencamp

59. “Country sure has changed in the last 10 years. It was one thing, then it was another. Country has slowly marched toward a rock beat and rock preservation. Country artists of today. Man! That’s how I used to sound in the ’80s.”

— John Mellencamp

60. “For me or a Bruce Springsteen to sit up in our ivory towers and make comments about racism, well, were not really in it, are we?”

— John Mellencamp

61. “Do I think it’s OK to fight authority as long as you’re only talking about the high school teacher? No.”

— John Mellencamp

62. “You shouldn’t even be in a band if you can’t play Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away.”

— John Mellencamp

63. “This is about black people selling out other black people.”

— John Mellencamp

64. “His frustration running very high, he takes it out on the ones he loves because it’s safe.”

— John Mellencamp

65. “I’m using my art to comment on what I see. You don’t have to agree with it.”

— John Mellencamp

66. “If fans are going to turn on me because of this, they weren’t my fans anyway. I couldn’t betray a whole 25 years of record making and not do this. I had to.”

— John Mellencamp

67. “Immersing yourself in the environment of a real record store where music is celebrated and cherished adds real value to the experience of buying music. In some ways, that retail experience is as important as the music.”

— John Mellencamp

68. “All I can do is repeat what I think is the best information that anybody ever gave me.”

— John Mellencamp

69. “A lot of Woody Guthrie’s songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.”

— John Mellencamp

70. “This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that’s it.”

— John Mellencamp

71. “If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease.”

— John Mellencamp

72. “We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing.”

— John Mellencamp

73. “I think it’s ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don’t buy my records. And there ain’t that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.”

— John Mellencamp

74. “My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.”

— John Mellencamp

75. “It’s my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news.”

— John Mellencamp

76. “I don’t have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don’t have to worry about choruses and hook lines.”

— John Mellencamp

77. “I know a lot of funny people in a lot of funny places.”

— John Mellencamp

78. “I’m wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it’s MTV and radio, well, they’re great things, but can’t be the only thing. I don’t know that it would work even for the Beatles.”

— John Mellencamp

79. “The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.”

— John Mellencamp

80. “A lot of record company people, even though they’re our age, want to be perceived as young hip guys, and they’re hurting the business.”

— John Mellencamp

81. “I couldn’t have recorded this record 15 years ago. My voice didn’t have the depth to pull these songs off.”

— John Mellencamp

82. “I want to sell to people my own age, because that’s the way I write songs.”

— John Mellencamp

83. “What’s the difference? One guy’s the same as the other.”

— John Mellencamp

84. “I would never say John Kerry would be a great president. I will say that George Bush has divided us; he has filled this country with hatred.”

— John Mellencamp

85. “I just think if the song’s good, sing it. I don’t care who’s doing it. I don’t care if it’s a country act. I don’t care if it’s a rock act. If the song’s good, sing it.”

— John Mellencamp

86. “I’m trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically.”

— John Mellencamp

87. “In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don’t think we’re gonna try to do that.”

— John Mellencamp

88. “I’ve never had anybody produce my records. I’ve always produced my own records. I’ve worked with a guy for a while who was an engineer who helped me produce records, but I’ve always made my own records. I’m a control fanatic. I’ve got to control everything.”

— John Mellencamp

89. “I went to New York in 1974, to either try to get a record deal, get into the New York Art Student League, or be a dancer. So that was my plan. Some plan. And I had no money.”

— John Mellencamp

90. “With no bottom line, it’s hard to know wrong from right. But I ain’t ever satisfied.”

— John Mellencamp

91. “When politicians use fear, they are playing into the enemy’s hand.”

— John Mellencamp

92. “There is no reward in this world for settling for something you don’t want.”

— John Mellencamp

93. “When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions.”

— John Mellencamp