"Ain't Even Done With the Night" by John Cougar

Song 36:

"Ain't Even Done With the Night" by John Cougar

Peak: 17

Year: 1981

Year end position: 63

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/17

Chronological Songs by Artist: 1/17

Video?: Yes

Wikipedia?:  No

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johncougarmellencamp/aintevendonewiththenight.html

A little while ago we had a six song series of songs that all started with the word "After".  Today starts an even longer run of songs.  There are currently 23 songs that start with the word "Ain't".  We won't spend next 23 days travelling in ain't-world, since there are some songs where the original and cover versions both made it into the top 20, so I'll consolidate those into one post.  That still leaves us with a sold 3 weeks of "Ain't" songs.

The interesting thing about "Ain't" is that it has a myriad of meanings.  I looked it up, and it was listed as a contraction of "am not", "are not", "is not", "has not" or "have not".  I think there's more than just those, but we'll see.  "Ain't" is actually in the dictionary as a word, but it is considered slang, and not grammatically correct.  I thought it might be fun to see what the titles of these songs should be if they were grammatically accurate.  Today, for instance, should really be "I'm Not Even Done With the Night".  I can see why songwriters would choose "Ain't".  It's a lot less stiff sounding than "I'm not".  I have a feeling that I'm going to side with the songwriters most of the time on these.

This is the first song we will hear from John Cougar or John Cougar Mellencamp or John Mellencamp, depending on the chronology of the song.  This comes from the "John Cougar" part of his career.  I found this quote about the name John Cougar:  "That (name) was put on me by some manager. I went to New York and everybody said, 'You sound like a hillbilly.' And I said, 'Well, I am.' So that's where he came up with that name. I was totally unaware of it until it showed up on the album jacket. When I objected to it, he said, 'Well, either you're going to go for it, or we’re not going to put the record out.' So that was what I had to do... but I thought the name was pretty silly.".  For the purposes of this blog, I am treating these all as the same person - since it is.

I was doing a little digging, and I was wondering how many acts had their first song alphabetically and chronologically be the same song, and there are a lot that had.  54 acts with >5 Top 20 hits had, but only 8 Hall of Famers have accomplished this feat.  We've already heard from one.  "After Midnight" by Eric Clapton was that song.  This song is #2.  The other six are "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino, "Another Day" by Paul McCartney, "Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears, "Different Corner" by George Michael, "Don't Stop Believin'" by the Glee Cast and "Give Peace a Chance" by John Lennon.  Strange that 2 ex-Beatles are among that list.  Honestly, I don't think there's any kind of conscious choice being made that accounts for this phenomena, it's just an interesting piece of trivia.

Let's get into the actual song.  From what I can gather from the lyrics, the song is about being in a relationship told from a young inexperienced boys point of view.  I would say that the singer in this song is actually pretty brave for admitting that he doesn't know what he's doing.  The last lines in the first verse pretty much sum this sentiment up: " Well, I'm tellin' ya that I don't know / If I know what to do".  Later in the chorus he says " Well, I don't even know / If I'm doin' this right".  My guess is that this is probably the first relationship the kid has been in and he's not very confident, so he's hoping to make things better by being out front about his insecurity.  It sounds like it's a little up in the air as to how well his admission is going over.  At one point, there's a line that goes " You say that's all right, hold tight".  That sounds promising, but later in the song, he sings " I feel the heat of your frustration" which sounds less good.  The song never remedies that tension.  At the end, you don't know if things work out with the singer or not.  I think that's not really the point.  I think the song really is describing that time when you don't have enough experience to be confident in a young relationship.  I think most people have experienced this in some form or another, so that makes this song relatable (at least to boys/men).