Gubernatorial Candidate Plays Hit Song. He Might Want To Listen To It.
New Jersey will be electing a governor this November, and the Republican candidate is former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli.
This entitles him, among other things, to choose a running mate for lieutenant governor, and this week he announced that would be former State Sen. Diane Allen.
To formally unveil the ticket, they scheduled a rally they entered to the blaring beat of “Jack and Diane.”
Quick rock ’n’ roll history lesson: “Jack and Diane” was a №1 breakthrough hit for John Cougar Mellencamp in 1982, when he was still John Cougar.
We offer this as a helpful hint, since it’s unclear whether anyone associated with Ciattarelli or Allen has ever listened to the record.
Musically, for pumping up a crowd, it’s not an awful choice. It’s a catchy tune with a nice hook and a propulsive stutter-step beat. Things only start to turn sketchy when you get to the lyrics, which start with a teenage boy (Jack) awkwardly trying to grope a teenage girl (Diane).
We might pause here for a moment to note that Ciattarelli is campaigning in part on the need for a return to good old-fashioned American family-values morality.
Does our golden age feature back-seat groping?
Nah, of course not. It only suggests, again, that the primary function of music at any campaign event is to pump up the crowd, not to inspire discussion on or even awareness of the lyrics. Ciattarelli and Allen could be spinning “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” if they didn’t want the cachet of seeming to tap into popular culture. Even if this bit of culture was popular during the first term of the Reagan administration.
“Jack and Diane” — the song — doesn’t take the groping anywhere, instead abruptly switching to the timeless teenage lament that becoming a grownup spoils everything good..
“Hold onto sixteen as long as you can,” the song advises listeners before getting to the chorus, which spells out the consequences of not doing so: “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”
Maybe that’s the kind of declaration that will inspire the voters of New Jersey to elect Jack Ciattarelli governor. Or maybe he and Allen will like the song so much they will record their own versions. Ya never know. .
Now Jack and Diane are not the first team to miss the point of a song they hope they can ride to victory. Many a sports team has charged onto the field to the sound of Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” which is about clinging to glory that wasn’t. Ronald Reagan, among others, tried to sell Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” as a modern-day patriotic anthem. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
Mellencamp said years later that he based “Jack and Diane” on the dark Tennessee Williams play Sweet Bird of Youth.
If he says so, okay. However much imagination is required to make that connection, it remains the biggest radio hit in Mellencamp’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career. In that sense, someone clearly hopes it could help set a pattern for the Ciattarelli-Allen campaign.
Don’t laugh. There was a low-budget teenage lesbian horror flick in 2012, also titled Jack & Diane, that had nothing to do with the song. It just used the same names.
There’s your pattern.
Oh yeah, the song goes on, long after the detail of listening to it is gone.
