{"id":4536,"date":"2025-08-17T03:01:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T03:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-between-a-laugh-and-a-tear-by-john-mellencamp-2\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T03:01:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T03:01:41","slug":"deep-cut-friday-between-a-laugh-and-a-tear-by-john-mellencamp-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/deep-cut-friday-between-a-laugh-and-a-tear-by-john-mellencamp-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Cut Friday: \u201cBetween a Laugh and a Tear\u201d by John Mellencamp"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-75942452.jpg\" width=\"\" height=\"\" alt=\"John Mellencamp performs onstage in 1985. (Credit: Ron Pownall\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)\"><\/figure>\n<p><em>Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The duality of pleasure and pain, of comedy and tragedy, or of life\u2019s highs and lows is fertile territory for songwriters. And John Mellencamp has created some great songs out of those and similar themes, including \u201cHurts So Good,\u201d \u201cDown and Out in Paradise,\u201d \u201cSad Clowns,\u201d and especially \u201cBetween a Laugh and a Tear\u201d from 1985\u2019s <em>Scarecrow<\/em>. Rickie Lee Jones\u2019s backing vocals add something special to Mellencamp\u2019s wry, bittersweet lyrics, but they didn\u2019t record together in person. Apparently, Mellencamp was such a fan that he was nervous to meet Jones in person, and opted to have her record in Los Angeles rather than fly her out to his newly built Belmont Mall Studio in Indiana.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/5-albums-i-cant-live-without-steve-jones-of-the-sex-pistols\/\">5 Albums I Can\u2019t Live Without: Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/?p=462277\">How &amp; the Why with Cypress Hill<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/20-years-later-the-soundtrack-of-brokeback-mountain-still-echoes\/\">20 Years Later, the Soundtrack of \u2018Brokeback Mountain\u2019 Still Echoes<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"GDHzEsXh9-I\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Of course, Mellencamp was a pretty big star in his own right by 1985, and <em>Scarecrow<\/em> was his third big multi-platinum hit. It was also the album that finally won over rock critics who\u2019d been lukewarm on the heartland rocker, landing him on the <em>Village Voice<\/em>\u2019s Pazz &amp; Jop critics\u2019 poll for the first time\u2014in third place right behind more established critical darlings Talking Heads and the Replacements. Seven different songs from <em>Scarecrow<\/em> charted on rock radio, but \u201cBetween a Laugh and a Tear\u201d wasn\u2019t one of them. A 2022 reissue of <em>Scarecrow<\/em> featured a brief demo of the song that doesn\u2019t have all the words, but features a beautiful rendering of the song\u2019s vocal melody in a slightly different tempo.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"fvHlcvNuP98\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Mellencamp hasn\u2019t played \u201cBetween a Laugh and a Tear\u201d much on tour since 1986. But he revisited it for 1999\u2019s <em>Rough Harvest<\/em>, which was recorded live in the studio by Mellencamp and his band, once again in Belmont Mall. The collection of covers and new arrangements of old Mellencamp favorites, mostly popular singles, fulfilled his contractual obligations to Mercury Records before he signed a new deal with Columbia. \u201cBetween a Laugh and a Tear\u201d stands out as one of the lesser known tracks on <em>Rough Harvest,<\/em> and also one of the more dramatic reinventions, hauntingly quiet and a full 90 seconds shorter than the <em>Scarecrow<\/em> version.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<lite-youtube videoid=\"dWo7yG09czA\" style=\"bottom: 0; height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; width: 100%; max-width:100%;\"><\/lite-youtube>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-three-more-essential-john-mellencamp-deep-album-cuts\"><strong>Three more essential John Mellencamp deep album cuts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-cheap-shot\"><strong>\u201cCheap Shot\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Mellencamp was known as Johnny Cougar or John Cougar on his first six albums, finally dropping the Cougar in 1991. His 1980 album <em>Nothin\u2019 Matters and What If It Did<\/em>, however, ends with Mellencamp thumbing his nose at the man who discovered and renamed him, Tony DeFries: \u201cWell, the record company\u2019s changin\u2019 my name now \/ Well, the record company\u2019s goin\u2019 out of business!\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-jackie-o\"><strong>\u201cJackie O\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>When I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq.com\/story\/john-mellencamp-interview\" target=\"_blank\">interviewed<\/a> Mellencamp a few years ago, I asked about his friendship with the late great John Prine, and he was self-deprecating about their collaborations: \u201cHe would come to Indiana and we\u2019d sit around and write stuff, but we never wrote anything very good, to be quite honest.\u201d The two songs they wrote together that did get released are gems, though: Mellencamp\u2019s playful 1983 song \u201cJackie O\u201d and Prine\u2019s wistful 1995 track \u201cTake a Look at My Heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-brothers\"><strong>\u201cBrothers\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>One of Mellencamp\u2019s two brothers, the late Ted Mellencamp, was his tour manager. It\u2019s not clear if the dark tale of sibling rivalry that he tells in \u201cBrothers\u201d is in any way autobiographical, the song includes some of the most compelling lyrics on 1994\u2019s <em>Dance Naked<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series. The duality of pleasure and pain, of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2152,31,3351,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep-cut-friday","category-features","category-john-mellencamp","category-pushly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}