Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did by John Mellencamp

Nothin' Matters and What If It Did, the fourth studio album from John Mellencamp, came out on Riva in 1980, back when the name on the sleeve still read John Cougar. The surprise in the credits is the producer: Steve Cropper, the soul pioneer, and he gives these heartland rockers a punchier kick, the drums snapping and the guitars kept lean and mean behind a singer with plenty of swagger and something to prove.

"This Time" led the way as the first single and cracked the Top 40, and "Ain't Even Done with the Night" went further, climbing to No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. The woman on the cover, who also turns up in the "This Time" video, is Edith Massey, one of John Waters' Dreamlanders, picked because Mellencamp wanted a face that said lower-middle-class life. The record went Platinum, and a 2005 remaster tacked on "Latest Game", a leftover from the American Fool sessions.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.