Small Town
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Small Town" | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by John Cougar Mellencamp from the album Scarecrow | |||||
| B-side | Small Town (Acoustic Version) | ||||
| Released | 1985 | ||||
| Format | 45 record | ||||
| Recorded | 1985 | ||||
| Genre | Rock | ||||
| Length | 3:42 | ||||
| Label | Riva Records | ||||
| Writer | John Mellencamp | ||||
| Producer | ??? | ||||
| Certification | ??? | ||||
| John Cougar Mellencamp singles chronology | |||||
| |||||
"Small Town" is a song written by John Mellencamp off his 1985 album Scarecrow. The song reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. [1]
Mellencamp wrote the song about his experiences growing up in a small town in Indiana, having been born in Seymour, Indiana, and living in Bloomington, Indiana, which, at the time of the release of the song, was much smaller. The music video has references to both towns. After that, Mellencamp has been known as champion of "small town America."
The song utters "small town" a total of 18 times.
As a promotion for this song, John Cougar played 2 free concerts in the small town of Chillicothe, Ohio where 2/3rds of the town's population signed a petition to ask him to play. He performed at the Ohio University branch on University Drive. At the time, CNN was the only major news carrier, they were at the event with cameras in hand.
NBA legend Larry Bird used this song on his retirement ceremony in 1993, particularly referring his town French Lick, Indiana as a "small town". It was also used for him in the NBA Superstars video series. Curiously, the state of Indiana was also the experiences of Mellencamp while writing the song.
While performing for the NFL Kickoff Special on NBC on September 6, 2007 some of the well-known lyrics were changed. "My wife was 13 when I wrote this song" being among the more humorous of lines not in the original.
