‘Cherry Bomb’: The John Mellencamp song about “men and women rubbing up against each other”
John Mellencamp’s rise to prominence was as scrappy and unpolished as the man himself. Born in Indiana, Mellencamp clawed his way into the industry in the late 1970s under the ill-fitting moniker “Johnny Cougar”, a name foisted upon him by a record executive who didn’t trust the marketability of his surname. And while it had a certain panache it missed the point of the artist’s ability to resonate with the beating heart of America.
Thankfully, Mellencamp wasn’t a songwriter built for compromise. His early records were uneven, but they laid the groundwork for what would become his signature sonic landscape: heartland rock driven by sharp lyricism and an instinctive understanding of blue-collar America. It would become an intoxicating mix that would leave the radio airwaves in a blissful daze.
It wasn’t until 1982’s American Fool that Mellencamp truly hit his stride and began to deliver a truly commercial proposition. That album, carried by the inescapable ‘Jack & Diane’ and the rollicking ‘Hurts So Good’, cemented his place as a radio staple, and it was reflected in his chart positions too. It is at this point that most artists would throw themselves into the blustery back carriage of the gravy train and ride it the whole way down the track. Instead, Mellencamp would deliver some of his grittiest work.
Leaning into his Midwestern roots, Mellencamp wrote about working-class struggles with an authenticity that resonated deeply. His depictions of struggle and strife felt so real that when he was allowed to sweeten things up, they became even more gratifying. One such moment came with the deeply nostalgic ‘Cherry Bomb’ from his 1987 record The Lonesome Jubilee.
Mellencamp had become the voice of a forgotten America—gritty, unvarnished, and resolutely his own with his albums, but this track was something far smoother. Still built on folk sounds of his country, Mellencamp would take a break off the dusty road and head towards the church dance for a cotton candy track with a more salacious core than most knew about it.
Based on Mellencamp’s experience of teen clubs in the 1960s like The Last Exit, The Scene, The Whiteland Barn, and The Sugar Shack, he used ‘Cherry Bomb’ to take a rose-tinted look back at those halcyon, worry-free days: “You had young men and women rubbing up against each other, passionately,” he said. “It was totally acceptable in the basement of that church because they were dancing, but try that behaviour in 1966 on the streets, and they’d probably put you in jail.”
Written almost exactly true to the songwriter’s life, with fights, dark nights, and street lights a large part of his everyday life at the time, the tune is uniquely positioned within his collection. ‘Cherry Bomb’ is easily one of Mellencamp’s more saccharine numbers, but it goes to show that such finely twilled sugar can be delivered by the right hand, especially when that hand is doused in the grit and grime of real life.
