You wrote about my life.” To me, that’s a successful song.” “I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, “I’m Jack and I’m Diane. “I think people, particularly in the Midwest, really identified with these characters,” Mellencamp once said. Not until he began playing it live did he truly appreciated how important of a song it had become to fans and even himself. He even got cold feet and flirted with the idea of cutting it from his new album American Fool until his band begged him to keep it. He was displeased with certain sonic elements particularly the hand claps. Interestingly, Mellencamp was far from happy with Jack & Diane after he recorded it.
When Mellencamp sings, “Hold on to 16 for all as you can / Changes coming around real soon / Make us women and men” it hits home a message easily relatable by millions of kids growing up in the early 80s in America and around the world. More than that it was a coming-of-age story about two teenage lovers who are scared to death of growing up. The song of course would go on to become a quintessential time capsule of small town rural America. He was young and ambitious and despite not getting his own way, the song’s themes still largely remained intact. He also implied that he didn’t have too many regrets about giving in to record label pressures. This revelation of the song’s true origins was only touched on by Mellencamp more recently some thirty years after its release. But Mellencamp was steered away from that idea by his record company and reluctantly Jack, the black male protagonist of the song, was suddenly a white football star. Originally Jack & Diane was in its infancy about mixed-race couples. The single went to #1 on the Billboard chart and turned into Mellencamp’s shining moment and his most successful hit. It came at a time when Mellencamp was still calling himself ‘John Cougar’. There is arguably no other opening verse that distinctively reminds us that we are listening to a John Mellencamp song than his 1982 hit single Jack & Diane. “Here’s a little ditty ‘bout Jack and Diane / Two American kids growing up in the heartland / Jackie’s gonna be a football star / Diane’s debutante, back seat of Jackie’s car.”
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