Mellencamp Covers Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'"

"The Times They Are A-Changin'," or at least John Mellencamp hopes. With the main theme of this upcoming election being "change," Mellencamp has recorded a cover version of Bob Dylan's famed "battle-cry for a generation." Mellencamp's version, recorded in stark black and white with Cougar performing solo on acoustic guitar, can be exclusively viewed now on his website. And as Mellencamp has made pretty clear in the past, he hopes the change comes from Obama and not McCain. Mellencamp has covered Dylan's songs many times in the past, from performances of "Farewell Angelina" to "All Along the Watchtower" to "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," but none of the covers thus far carry the political weight and "relevant ideals of the past" of his rendition of "Times."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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