Songoftheday 5/27/14 - Radio playin' softly some singer's sang sad song, he's singin' about standing in the shadows of love I guess he feels awfully alone...

John Cougar Mellencamp - "Lonely Ol' Night"
from the album Scarecrow (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day is from Midwestern rocker John Cougar Mellencamp, whose 1983 album Uh Huh pointed him more into an everyman artistic direction, and scored three top-20 pop hits with "Crumblin' Down", "Pink Houses", and "The Authority Song". In 1985, John started writing and recording the music to what would end up his probably his most important piece of work, the Scarecrow album. Wanting to replicate the oldtime 60s rock and roll of his youth, he put together a top notch backing band who learned classic rock tunes before setting them loose on his originals. The resulting work was a classic that should rank over some more heralded albums, but Mellencamp had a lot to overcome for his "Cougar" days. The first single from the album was the rollicking "Lonely Ol' Night", a straight-ahead dance-rock number like "Crumblin' Down" was....

"Lonely Ol' Night" became Mellencamp's fifth top-10 pop hit in the U.S. in October of 1985, while also topping the Mainstream Rock radio, his second after "Hurts So Good" did the trick in 1982. The record even popped into Billbaord's Adult Contemporary radio chart at #37. Internationally, the single went all the way to #4 in Canada and  #32 in Australia.

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Here's John live at Farm Aid in 1995 with the song...

And again from the naughties...

Up tomorrow: A former Baby is there for you constantly.