“I don’t hear a hit.” How many times has that sentence been uttered after an established artist turns in their latest project to a record label? John Cougar was coming off his breakthrough album American Fool when he recorded a batch of songs that would comprise an album called Uh-Huh. Before he handed them in to PolyGram, he listened to the recordings one more time. He had teamed up with one of his songwriting heroes, John Prine, to write a song. He was happy with “Pink Houses,” which he wrote by himself, and believed in its radio potential. The album needed one more “hit” song. Let’s look at the story behind “Crumblin’ Down” by John Cougar Mellencamp.
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Some people ain’t no damn good
You can’t trust ’em, you can’t love em
No good deed goes unpunished
And I don’t mind being their whipping boy
I’ve had that pleasure for years and years
No, no, I never was a sinner-tell me, what else can I do
Second best is what you get till you learn to bend the rules
Time respects no person. What you lift up must fall
They’re waiting outside to claim my crumblin’ walls
He Needed Another Hit
Before he delivered the album to PolyGram, Mellencamp reached out to his old high school buddy George Green. The pair had written together before and had their biggest success with “Hurts so Good” on the previous album. Green had the seeds of a song about crumbling walls, and the pair began trading lines back and forth, trying to outdo each other. It was a traditional verse-chorus foundation, but Mellencamp crammed as many words into each line as he could. He sang about his “don’t-give-a-damn” attitude, the unpleasant characters he dealt with in the music business, and his realization of his fragile situation as this month’s flavor. The song was just what was needed. He added it to the album and handed it in.
Green told author Martin Torgoff, “The feeling we worked with is, ‘What are you going to do when it’s over when the big-time deal falls through? I’ll be here, how ’bout you?”
Saw my picture in the paper
Read the news around my face
And now some people
Don’t want to treat me the same
The Industrial Revolution Is Over
The song speaks to Mellencamp’s celebrity, but the frustration in the verses results from seeing his older cousin struggle after losing his job as an electrical engineer. He told the New York Daily News, “I’ve been lucky. I know that. But there are a lot of people, people close to me, who haven’t been so lucky, and I’d rather write about them than me. … It’s a very frightening thing when you realize the industrial revolution is over, and there’s no place to go.”
When the walls come tumblin’ down
When the walls come crumblin’ crumblin’
When the walls come tumblin’ tumblin’ down
The Lead Single
The song jumped onto the charts, propelling the album into the Top 10 and setting up the success of “Pink Houses” and “Authority Song.” In 2013, Mellencamp told Rolling Stone magazine, “Reagan was president—he was deregulating everything, and the walls were crumbling down on the poor. The song was the last one recorded and the first single. It was a hit immediately. I felt like I was pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.”
Some people say I’m obnoxious and lazy
That I’m uneducated and my opinion means nothin’
But I know I’m a real good dancer
Don’t need to look over my shoulder to see what I’m after
Everybody’s got their problems, ain’t no new news here
I’m the same old trouble you’ve been having for years
Don’t confuse the problem with the issue, girl,
‘Cause it’s perfectly clear
Uh-Huh
The album title made reference to those same unpleasant characters in the music business who made Mellencamp their “whipping boy” years earlier and to the younger version of himself who went along with them. It was also the first time the singer used the name Mellencamp, signaling the singer was coming into his own. The A&R department at PolyGram wasn’t sold on “Pink Houses,” but after the success of “Born In the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen just four months earlier, they realized the wave of patriotic rock may be just the opening that was needed.
Just a human desire to have you come near
Want to put my arms around you
Feel your breath in my ear
You can bend me, you can break me
But you better stand clear
The Music Video
MTV added the song in heavy rotation, helping it reach the Top 10 as well. The dramatically lit soundstage with Mellencamp sitting on a chair tapping his penny loafer, smoking a cigarette, kicking over a chair, and dancing as he lip-synched the song was hardly “high concept,” but it was an expected part of any rock and roll artist’s portfolio. He had success with his earlier videos, and people anticipated them.
When the walls come tumblin’ down
When the walls come crumblin’ crumblin’
When the walls come tumblin’ tumblin’ down
A Raw Steak on His Eye
Backup singer Crystal Taliefero told author Paul Rees in his 2021 biography Mellencamp, “We had this one routine we did onstage during ‘Crumblin Down.’ [Mellencamp would] stand on the spot, middle of the stage, and I’d run at top speed and jump clear over his head. I was very physical, like an athlete. One night, he lifted his head up, and I clocked him. He went down, and I did, too. I sat right on the poor guy’s face. You could hear the audience kind of inhale. We had an interval halfway through the show. I went to John’s dressing room. I was scared. Figured that was it, I’m out. I knocked, and he yelled out, ‘Yeah, yeah, what?!’ I opened the door and he was sitting there with a raw steak over his eye. I told him, ‘That’s it, we’re never doing that again.'”
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Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for SeriousFun Children’s Network
