Pink Houses
The lyrics of "Pink Houses" by John Mellencamp (listen to the song on Mellencamp's Last.fm page) are a social commentary, packed carefully into the confines of a three-minute pop song. As a songwriter, Mellencamp has kept it simple throughout his career. His songs are not quite as inventive or fine-crafted as a Bob Dylan or a Bruce Springsteen, but they are simple, accessible, and come grounded in a small-town American heartland sensibility. He came up in the music business at an interesting time, in the early days of MTV. He was orginally packaged as "John Cougar" - a sort of market-driven caricature - but as his success allowed him some independence, he the name on the albums to John Cougar Mellencamp and then to John Mellencamp.
I heard Terry Gross's interview with Mellencamp on Fresh Air last night. In it, he talked about his folk influences, and the "four songs" that he wrote, over and over.
"Pink Houses" is a song built on a narrative impulse, but it is not really a "story song," in that it doesn't tell one simple story. Instead, it uses a few snapshots to suggest a larger commentary.
Here's the first verse:There's a black man with a black cat livin' in a black neighborhood
He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know he thinks that he's got it so good
And there's a woman in the kitchen cleanin' up the evenin' slop
And he looks at her and says,
"Hey darlin', I can remember when you could stop a clock."
We're presented with this image of a couple, an older couple, a black couple. We can guess that they've gotten the short end of the stick, in that there's an "interstate runnin' through [their] front yard" and yet the man "thinks he's got it so good." He's not wallowing, even though by the simple fact that he's black, we intuit a larger social commentary about race and society and the way it must affect his situation -- in essence, why an interstate would have been built through his neighborhood and not a more affluent neighborhood. He's got a wife and a house and he remembers when they were young and in love.
I'm going to skip the chorus for a second and move to the second verse:There's a young man in a T-shirt
Listenin' to a rock-and-roll station
He's got greasy hair, greasy smile
He says, "Lord this must be my destination."
'Cause they told me when I was younger
"Boy you're gonna be president."
But just like everything else those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went
If the first verse fits easily into a common social commentary (the blight of black America), the second does not. What do we make of this "young man in a T-shirt"? On the one hand, he's got "greasy hair" and a "greasy smile," suggesting both that he is probably of working class background (grease here being both a hair style and also a suggestion of "grease monkey" or gas engines), and possibly that there's something "greasy," slippery, or self-serving about him. But what do we learn about him? Little. Just a certain nostalgia ("those old crazy dreams") and the fact that he's stayed put -- perhaps he thought he'd break out of his small town once and yet he didn't, for whatever reason. So he puts a positive spin on it: "Lord this must be my destination."
So we have these two snapshots of people. Nothing happens. There is no event. The song is a glimpse into these small-town American lives, whittled down to a verse in a three-minute pop song. So, a lot turns on the chorus of the song, and the commentary in the third verse. Here's the chorus:Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me
So, these snapshots, these little anecdotes: "Ain't that America"? Bundled up here are the "for you and me" from Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," and the patriotic "home of the free." I think the "somethin' to see" line is very midwestern, from the part of America where vacations are road trips, consisting of roadside attractions, diversions, "somethin' to see." And then there's what it all adds up to: "Little pink houses for you and me." What is the attitude of that line? That's the key to the song. There is some irony, some deflation in it. It is the American dream, but it's a diminished American dream, a plastic, cheap, kitsch American dream. But as much as pink suggests sentimentalized kitsch, it also suggests a touch of color. These are not beige houses. So the tone is a little complicated.
And then we have the third verse, which is different than the first two:Well there's people and more people
What do they know know know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh yeah
And there's winners and there's losers
But they ain't no big deal
'Cause the simple man baby pays for thrills, the bills,
and the pills that kill
In the first two verses, we have snapshots of individual characters - people we can picture in our minds. In the third verse, we have this commentary. There is no "I" in the song, and for the first two verses, we get little sense of a speaker as a character, just an observer. But here, we get the speaker's attitude, still in that midwestern voice. "There's people and more people" and "what do they know"? Who are these people? There are a lot of them. And they work in high rises and vacation at resorts, taking plane rides to places they probably don't see, skipping over all the people on the ground on the way to get there. These are not the same sort of people we saw in verse one and two. For one, they are faceless. And for two, they are likely from the big cities, the coasts. And the line "what do they know" suggests that what they don't know is the everyday lives of the characters in the first two verses. The lines "there's winners and there's losers / but they ain't no big deal" (is it "they" or "that"?) are an explanation: the societal divide, the us vs. them. And then, at the end, you get the populist "simple man" who is on the hook for it all: the "thrills," the "bills" and the "pills that kill." And then the chorus repeats: "Ain't that America." So the song is an attempt to de-mythologize America and the American dream and to point out that there are people who fall by the wayside, and that's the way it is.
I heard Terry Gross's interview with Mellencamp on Fresh Air last night. In it, he talked about his folk influences, and the "four songs" that he wrote, over and over.
"Pink Houses" is a song built on a narrative impulse, but it is not really a "story song," in that it doesn't tell one simple story. Instead, it uses a few snapshots to suggest a larger commentary.
Here's the first verse:There's a black man with a black cat livin' in a black neighborhood
He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know he thinks that he's got it so good
And there's a woman in the kitchen cleanin' up the evenin' slop
And he looks at her and says,
"Hey darlin', I can remember when you could stop a clock."
We're presented with this image of a couple, an older couple, a black couple. We can guess that they've gotten the short end of the stick, in that there's an "interstate runnin' through [their] front yard" and yet the man "thinks he's got it so good." He's not wallowing, even though by the simple fact that he's black, we intuit a larger social commentary about race and society and the way it must affect his situation -- in essence, why an interstate would have been built through his neighborhood and not a more affluent neighborhood. He's got a wife and a house and he remembers when they were young and in love.
I'm going to skip the chorus for a second and move to the second verse:There's a young man in a T-shirt
Listenin' to a rock-and-roll station
He's got greasy hair, greasy smile
He says, "Lord this must be my destination."
'Cause they told me when I was younger
"Boy you're gonna be president."
But just like everything else those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went
If the first verse fits easily into a common social commentary (the blight of black America), the second does not. What do we make of this "young man in a T-shirt"? On the one hand, he's got "greasy hair" and a "greasy smile," suggesting both that he is probably of working class background (grease here being both a hair style and also a suggestion of "grease monkey" or gas engines), and possibly that there's something "greasy," slippery, or self-serving about him. But what do we learn about him? Little. Just a certain nostalgia ("those old crazy dreams") and the fact that he's stayed put -- perhaps he thought he'd break out of his small town once and yet he didn't, for whatever reason. So he puts a positive spin on it: "Lord this must be my destination."
So we have these two snapshots of people. Nothing happens. There is no event. The song is a glimpse into these small-town American lives, whittled down to a verse in a three-minute pop song. So, a lot turns on the chorus of the song, and the commentary in the third verse. Here's the chorus:Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me
So, these snapshots, these little anecdotes: "Ain't that America"? Bundled up here are the "for you and me" from Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," and the patriotic "home of the free." I think the "somethin' to see" line is very midwestern, from the part of America where vacations are road trips, consisting of roadside attractions, diversions, "somethin' to see." And then there's what it all adds up to: "Little pink houses for you and me." What is the attitude of that line? That's the key to the song. There is some irony, some deflation in it. It is the American dream, but it's a diminished American dream, a plastic, cheap, kitsch American dream. But as much as pink suggests sentimentalized kitsch, it also suggests a touch of color. These are not beige houses. So the tone is a little complicated.
And then we have the third verse, which is different than the first two:Well there's people and more people
What do they know know know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh yeah
And there's winners and there's losers
But they ain't no big deal
'Cause the simple man baby pays for thrills, the bills,
and the pills that kill
In the first two verses, we have snapshots of individual characters - people we can picture in our minds. In the third verse, we have this commentary. There is no "I" in the song, and for the first two verses, we get little sense of a speaker as a character, just an observer. But here, we get the speaker's attitude, still in that midwestern voice. "There's people and more people" and "what do they know"? Who are these people? There are a lot of them. And they work in high rises and vacation at resorts, taking plane rides to places they probably don't see, skipping over all the people on the ground on the way to get there. These are not the same sort of people we saw in verse one and two. For one, they are faceless. And for two, they are likely from the big cities, the coasts. And the line "what do they know" suggests that what they don't know is the everyday lives of the characters in the first two verses. The lines "there's winners and there's losers / but they ain't no big deal" (is it "they" or "that"?) are an explanation: the societal divide, the us vs. them. And then, at the end, you get the populist "simple man" who is on the hook for it all: the "thrills," the "bills" and the "pills that kill." And then the chorus repeats: "Ain't that America." So the song is an attempt to de-mythologize America and the American dream and to point out that there are people who fall by the wayside, and that's the way it is.