214 Quotes by John Mellencamp

My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious.

I remember the first time I saw a CD, a technology guy brought one to my house and said we will be able to sell millions and millions of players, and people will have to restock their record collections. It was all about money. It was all about how much money we would make, "we" being "him."

Oh, I think country has changed tremendously. I think country has totally changed. Country music when I was a kid was Hank Williams. If you put Hank and Elvis together, there wasn't that musical difference. But as the Beatles showed up and the English invasion, I think country music got pretty far away from rock n' roll.

I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.

We could walk 3 minutes and be on the beach. I think the music kind of suffered because of it. It kind of smelled like Jimmy Buffett, which is a bad thing.

I have a bunch of information in my head that I'm not afraid to put in song or onto a canvas. Into any conversation.

I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty.

I look at some of my contemporaries trying to emulate what they were 30 years ago and just because of the age factor alone, they look silly.

It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news.