Jack & Diane
1982 single by John Mellencamp
"Jack & Diane" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter John Mellencamp, then performing as "John Cougar". Described by critics as a "love ballad", this song was released as the second single from Mellencamp's 1982 album American Fool, and was chosen by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as one of the Songs of the Century. It spent four weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1982 and is Mellencamp's most successful hit single.
Background and production
According to John Mellencamp, "Jack & Diane" was based on the 1962 Tennessee Williams film Sweet Bird of Youth. He said of recording the song: "'Jack & Diane' was a terrible record to make. When I play it on guitar by myself, it sounds great; but I could never get the band to play along with me. That's why the arrangement's so weird. Stopping and starting, it's not very musical." Mellencamp has also stated that the clapping was used only to help keep time and was supposed to be removed in the final mix. However, he left the clapping in once he realized the song would not work without it.
In 2014, Mellencamp revealed that the song was originally about an interracial couple, where Jack was African American and not a football star, but the record company persuaded him to change it.
The public source identifies “Jack & Diane” as 1982 single by John Mellencamp. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Jack, Diane and single.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jack & Diane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.