Watch John Mellencamp pause show to slam ‘Gulf of America’
John Mellencamp sparked cheers after mocking the “Gulf of America” during a live performance of “Pink Houses.”
John Mellencamp has never flinched from speaking his mind.
Now in the midst of his Dancing Words Tour – The Greatest Hits, which is hitting amphitheaters around the country through August, Mellencamp is continuing his legacy as a blue collar champion who never ducks from criticism.
During his shows, the whiskey-voiced rocker is adding some commentary to his 1983 hit, “Pink Houses.”
At his July 26 tour stop in Wantagh, New York, after singing part of the song’s third verse – “Well, there’s people and more people/what do they know, know, know? Go to work in some high rise/and vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico” – Mellencamp put his hand up and said, “Wait a minute. Is it really still the Gulf of Mexico? They changed the name of it, but I’m not buying it.”
Cheers erupted from the crowd as Mellencamp, 74, continued, “It’s the Gulf of Mexico. (Expletive) the Gulf of America. That’s just not right.”
The “Gulf of America” comment was a jab at President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order in 2025 to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The title of the ocean basin bounded by Mexico and the U.S. Gulf Coast has been used since the 1550s.
At his July 25 show in Holmdel, New Jersey, Mellencamp also made note of the lyric.
“The Gulf of Mexico? Is that right?” he asked sarcastically, as shouts of “Yeah!” could be heard from the crowd. “It’s not the Gulf of America? What a stupid (expletive) idea that is!”
Mellencamp took a beat and with a slight smile, kicked back into the lyrics of the song (“And there’s winners and there’s losers/but they ain’t no big deal”).
“Pink Houses,” written in 1983 when he was John Cougar Mellencamp, has been incorrectly co-opted over the years by politicians – John McCain and John Edwards among them – who wanted to turn the “ain’t that America” refrain into a rallying cry.
But Mellencamp has explained for years that, much like Bruce Springsteen’s terminally misinterpreted “Born in the USA,” the bones of “Pink Houses” isn’t about celebrating America, but scrutinizing race and class inequality.
He wrote the song after driving along Interstate 65 in Indianapolis and seeing a Black man sitting on the front lawn of a pink house in a lawn chair, holding his cat – the image that inspired the opening lines of the song.
Mellencamp opted to take a positive approach to how the man lived, “that he wasn’t isolated, that he was very happy” sitting around watching cars go by, he told Rolling Stone in 2013.
But, he continued, “This (song) one has been misconstrued over the years because of the chorus – it sounds very rah-rah. But it’s really an anti-American song. The American dream had pretty much proven itself as not working anymore. It was another way for me to sneak something in.”
Likewise his first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, 1982’s “Jack & Diane.”
Mellencamp has frequently told fans and interviewers that the “little ditty” about those two American kids growing up in the heartland isn’t the beer-soaked singalong that people want it to be.
“’Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone’ is not a positive message,” he told USA TODAY in 2022. “And people sing it like it’s the national anthem.”