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“The American dream had pretty much proven itself as not working anymore. But it’s really an anti-American song,” he told Rolling Stone in the same interview. “This one has been misconstrued over the years because of the chorus – it sounds very rah-rah. In fact, the song wasn’t the way many think it is. There was a time there in the early 1980s when I had no idea whether or not I liked. Just by an observation of one man’s existence in the interstate of Indianapolis, John Mellencamp took a great issue with American life. Certain Songs 810: John Cougar Mellencamp Pink Houses. “You know, he thinks, he’s got it so good / And there’s a woman in the kitchen cleaning up evening slop / And he looks at her and says, ‘Hey darling, I can remember when you could stop a clock.” “There’s a black man with a black cat / Living in a black neighborhood / He’s got an interstate running’ through his front yard,” he depicts.
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Lyrically, it was a straightforward approach. So, I went with that positive route when I wrote this song.” He continued, “Then I imagined he wasn’t isolated, but he was happy. I thought, ‘Wow, is this what life can lead to? Watching the fuckin’ cars go by on the interstate?,’” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. “ was sitting on his front lawn in front of a pink house in one of those shitty, cheap lawn chairs. ‘Pink Houses’ was John’s most misunderstood song, he was inspired to write this song when he saw a black man holding a black cat on his front lawn – cool and calm: