PERFORMER: JOHN MELLENCAMP
ALBUM: HUMAN WHEELS
LABEL: MERCURY
THE BOTTOM LINE: By lacing his small town twang with urban soul, Mellencamp brews an all-American sound.
LIKE A TROUBADOUR ADRIFT ON the blue highways of America, John Mellencamp has hitched his muse to the hopes and broken dreams of the heartland. Even before the mid-'80s, when he renounced the pop artifice of his John Cougar past and took back his given name, he had found his calling as a spinner of hook-laden odes to the ordinary man. Early hits that hinted at the darker dimensions of suburbia, like Jack and Diane and...