The Lonesome Jubilee
{{ Album infobox |
Name = The Lonesome Jubilee | Type = Album | Artist = John Cougar Mellencamp | Cover = John Cougar Mellencamp-The Lonesome Jubilee (album cover).jpg | Background = orange | Released = 1987 | Recorded = Sep 1986-Jun 1987 | Genre = Rock | Length = 39:38 | Label = Mercury Records | Producer = ? | Reviews =
* All Music Guide (4.5/5) link | Last album = Scarecrow
(1985) | This album = The Lonesome Jubilee
(1987) | Next album = Big Daddy
(1989)The Lonesome Jubilee is an album by John Mellencamp, released in 1987 on the Mercury Records label. It has considerable country and folk music influences, including the use of steel guitar, violins accordion and hammond organ. It contained a number of hit singles, including Paper in Fire and Cherry Bomb.
The lyrics are a mix of social comment and reflection, and nostalgic descriptions of younger life and the process of maturing. Paper In Fire is a cautionary tale concerned with the cost of chasing our dreams. Down and Out In Paradise chronicles a series of stories of economic and social hardship as if told to the President. Check It out is a commentary on day to day existence that fosters the hope that future generations will understand better how to live. The Real Life continues the these of concern about the way lives are lived, and includes two vignettes of the lives of "Suzanne" and "Jackcon Jackson". Cherry Bomb is a nostalgic but fundamentally happy review of the narrators life - "we were young and we were improving". We Are The People lists categories of people - the homeless, the oppressed, people in pain - against the refrain "May my thoughts be with you". Unemployment and its effect on the narrator and his wife Maryanne, is the subject of Empty Hand. Hard Times For An Honest Man continues the existential theme, noting, against a backdrop of two more cautionary tales, that "the rent we pay to stay here gets high". Hotdogs And Hamburgers addresses the question of right and wrong, and the need for personal choice, within a narritive describing the a lift givien to an Indian girl on Route 66. Rooty Toot Toot, like Cherry Bomb, is happy nostalic tale of the narrator's youth.# "Paper In Fire"# "Down And Out In Paradise"# "Check It Out"# "The Real Life"# "Cherry Bomb"# "We Are The People"# "Empty Hands"# "Hard Times For An Honest Man"# "Hotdogs And Hamburgers"# "Rooty Toot Toot"
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