John Mellencamp: "Chevrolet actually has been a better record company to me than Columbia ever was. At least they were honest"

Little Johnny Cougar sat down with Reuters as he prepares to drop his 21st album. He says it's tough for a man of 55 years to get a new song on the radio, let alone tv. And that's why he sold a four year old song to a car maker.

Reuters: You've taken a lot of flak for licensing a song for a Chevrolet commercial. I though gas guzzles were anathema to environmentally conscious liberal types?

Mellencamp: "I think the reason people are giving me grief about it is because I still don't think people should sell their songs for commercial use, but things have changed dramatically. For a guy my age, there's no place ... for our music to be heard. These records take too long. They're too hard to make, and they're too hard to do, and why would you want to do them
unless people are going to hear them? I've said this before: Chevrolet actually has been a better record company to me than Columbia ever was. At least they were honest. They said, This is what we're going to do, and this what they did."

Reuters: Did Chevrolet have any say over the lyrics?

Mellencamp: "Oh, no. That song is three years old. I was playing that song live, and that's how they heard that song...I did shows in places like Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, towns like that, and I was opening the show in these arenas with that song. They heard the song, and that's how the whole thing came about."

full interview here